October 25, 2018 | Nearly $2.6 billion has been spent on lobbyists so far, the most through three quarters since 2010 and $100 million more than at this point in 2017. Third-quarter spending is up by approximately $30 million over last year.

October 23, 2018 | Political donations made by foreign agents hired to act on behalf of Saudi Arabian interests have exceeded $1.6 million in the 2018 election cycle, according to a new analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

August 8, 2018 | Foreign lobbyists and agents acting on behalf of foreign interests have reported hundreds of millions of dollars in payments since January 2017, an analysis of OpenSecrets’ exclusive new Foreign Lobby Watch data reveals.

July 16, 2018 | Andrew Wheeler’s rise to acting head of the Environmental Protection Agency is only the latest former lobbyist through the revolving door and into an influential role within the Trump administration.

May 25, 2018 | Democratic leaders on Monday unveiled a policy agenda addressing voting rights, ethics laws and influence peddling while criticizing President Donald Trump and his party for not draining the “swamp”. But that swamp sustains Democrats, too.

May 1, 2018 | The growing number of departures by House incumbents this cycle is leaving a Wild West of open-seat races, some of which feature deep-pocketed candidates self-funding aggressive campaign bids.

November 15, 2017 | In April, one of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s most powerful opposition leaders requested Secretary Rex Tillerson’s support for his return from exile in a letter sent through a prominent Washington lobbying firm. Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld submitted the letter on behalf of Moise Katumbi, the leading opposition candidate in the Congo’s…

October 23, 2017 | Note: Some lobbyists file after the quarterly deadline. Visit our lobbying page for the most current data. Washington lobbying groups spent less money and reported fewer lobbyists during the third quarter of 2017 than in any quarter since at least 2008, when Center for Responsive Politics began tracking the data. Congress spent the summer considering…

October 13, 2017 | Qatar has hired seven American lobbying firms and spent nearly $5 million on U.S. lobbying and media campaigns in an effort to fight its isolation by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, and others in June. The Saudi-led coalition began its economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar on June 5 after the country’s…

October 10, 2017 | It’s been a big week for politicians refunding tainted campaign donations. First, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. returned a $32,000 contribution from Donald Trump’s personal attorney Marc Kasowitz, who made the donation in 2013 after Vance decided not to pursue a fraud investigation against Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. Now, at least a…

August 1, 2017 | Note: Since some lobbyists file after the quarterly deadline, visit our lobbying summary for the most recent data. For the past five years — with the exception of a dip in 2016 — spending on lobbying in the first six months has been steadily increasing. Overall spending for the first six months of 2017 amounts…

July 24, 2017 | As part of President Trump’s promise to dismantle the regulatory state, his administration has cancelled or delayed Obama-era protections for workers and the environment. It has installed agency heads unlikely to pursue strict enforcement of existing rules. And it has allowed political appointees to oversee the rollback of rules affecting their previous employers. Now industry groups see another…

July 7, 2017 | In May, at a conference for investors in New York, venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya raised eyebrows by calling Amazon a “multi-trillion dollar monopoly hiding in plain sight.” Amazon’s current market cap is $461 billion; getting to a market cap of $3 trillion, as Palihapitiya suggested it would, will require a nearly seven-fold increase in value. Just…

July 7, 2017 | 267 former aides who worked for four congressional committees pivotal in approving new healthcare legislation are registered lobbyists for clients from the health sector or health insurance industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ analysis of Senate lobbying data. (See all the data here) In addition, 18 former lawmakers also swung through the revolving…

June 5, 2017 | After a standoff with the Office of Government Ethics over whether the White House had to disclose ethics waivers given to White House staff members, the Trump administration blinked first. On May 31st, the administration disclosed that it has issued 14 waivers — more than four times the amount Barack Obama granted during his first…

May 31, 2017 | In April, another skirmish broke out in Indian Country when the Kalispel Tribe of Indians filed a federal lawsuit to stop the Spokane Tribe of Indians from building a casino. The Kalispel claim the gaming operation would draw business away from their own casino, located only two miles away from the would-be Spokane one, and thereby…

May 24, 2017 | Former Trump campaign officials haven’t exactly been bashful about cashing in on their ties to the president in the lobbying sphere. Take Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager. Shortly after the election, he cofounded a lobbying and consulting firm, Avenue Strategies, boasting to domestic and foreign clients of his administration ties. He left the firm…

May 18, 2017 | Shots have been fired in the campaign leading up to Montana’s May 25 special election. Literally. Both Republican candidate Greg Gianforte and Democratic candidate Rob Quist have aired ads in which they load a rifle and obliterate a computer and a TV screen, respectively. In his ad, Gianforte accuses Quist of wanting to create a…

May 17, 2017 | Uber service for pallets of lumber, crates of fruit and boxes of bolts? Last week, the company’s embattled CEO Travis Kalanick tweeted an image of an “Uber Freight” truck, a product of the company’s still-gestating foray into the trucking industry. Amazon, reportedly, is also working on an app that will connect truckers and shippers —…

May 4, 2017 | For someone who repeatedly berated Wall Street during his campaign, President Trump received a lot of inauguration help from its inhabitants. The securities and investment industry contributed the greatest chunk to Trump’s inaugural festivities, $14.3 million, or about 13 percent of all donations. To compare, Obama received $4.6 million from Wall Street in 2009 and $3…

May 1, 2017 | “I think that American people should know that the members of Congress are underpaid,” said Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) in April 2014, having recently announced his retirement from the House. To be fair, he was discussing the results of an annual House vote on adjusting lawmaker pay: Each year, Congress can give itself a raise to keep…

April 24, 2017 | Note: Since some lobbyists file after the quarterly deadline, visit our lobbying summary for the most current data. Before President Trump was sworn in, his rhetoric and treatment of lobbyists seemed pretty harsh. He announced lobbyists would be kicked off the transition team and registered lobbyists couldn’t work in his administration, and some lobbyists deregistered to…

April 21, 2017 | With President Trump’s 100th day looming, he’s struggled to check off some of the big initiatives on his to-do list, such as getting rid of Obamacare and overhauling the tax code. These hefty projects invite companies and other groups with something at stake to frantically lobby the government, hoping the legislation can turn in their…

April 19, 2017 | What does it take to stage a welcome-to-the-neighborhood blowout? President Trump raised $107 million for his inaugural festivities, shattering previous records. The former titleholder, Barack Obama, raised half that, $53.2 million, in 2009 — though Obama imposed far stricter limits on amounts and sources of donations. At least 47 people or organizations gave $1 million…

April 5, 2017 | Politicians rarely like to talk about the money that fuels their campaigns, and for good reason. The big players in campaign finance — billionaire megadonors, professional fundraisers, lobbyists — rarely get a warm reception from the public. Perhaps the only exception is the much-loved small donor. In 2016, campaigns and PACs raised 32.2 percent of their funds…

March 24, 2017 | Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price has been mired in questions about his investments in the healthcare industry. As it turns out, some of the people helping him get grounded at the department are also prompting questions about their ties with the industry. Lance Leggitt, a lobbyist at Baker Donelson since 2006, was named…

March 24, 2017 | Moments after President Trump’s January announcement that Neil Gorsuch was his pick to fill the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat, a small nonprofit that most Americans have never heard of launched ConfirmGorsuch.com. Complete with a tender video telling how Gorsuch “ran a paper route, shoveled snow, worked the night shift” before becoming a judge, the site…

March 23, 2017 | Each time President Donald Trump adds another Goldman Sachs alum to his administration, it’s tempting to bring up his campaign-trail rhetoric about the investment bank. After all, it seems as though Trump is trying to drain the swamp by forcing it to overflow; last week, he nominated Goldman managing director James Donovan to the post of deputy Treasury…

March 13, 2017 | A former national security adviser was paid more than $500,000 last fall by a group linked with the Turkish government to discredit exiled preacher Fethullah Gülen, an enemy of the Turkish president. An Egyptian intelligence agency hired public relations firms Weber Shandwick and Cassidy & Associates to improve its image. Iraq sent letters to top Trump officials such as Secretary…

March 8, 2017 | Sen. Chris Van Hollen‘s (D-Md.) star has been on the rise in the Democratic party: After seven terms in the House, he won a Senate seat last November, and now occupies a much-coveted spot on the Appropriations committee while also chairing the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the party’s fundraising arm for its Senate candidates. A knack for…

March 2, 2017 | You couldn’t blame defense contractors for being in a great mood this week. In his speech to Congress on Tuesday, President Donald Trump — who has repeatedly said he wants to build up American military dominance — announced that he’s “sending Congress a budget that rebuilds the military, eliminates the defense sequester and calls for…

February 22, 2017 | There’s a packed field in the race to chair the Democratic National Committee, whose 447 members will elect their new leader on Saturday. Rep. Keith Ellison and former Secretary of Labor Tom Perez lead the nine candidates who remain in the contest — a relatively diverse bunch hailing from around the country and from various levels…

February 15, 2017 | President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began establishing their face-to-face diplomatic relationship with a meeting on February 15th. But the broader ties between the U.S. and Israel date back decades, and have been bolstered by pro–Israel interests that are active political donors and haven’t hesitated to press their views on issues affecting the…

February 1, 2017 | Note: Since some lobbyists file after the quarterly deadline, visit our lobbying summary for the most current data. We started to spot the decline when Barack Obama took office: Fewer people registered to lobby, and less money was being spent to influence Washington. And that trend continued last year: By the end of 2016, companies spent $3.1 billion…

January 27, 2017 | Note: Some lobbyists file after the quarterly deadline. Visit our lobbying page for the most current data. Quite a few corporations floated multi-billion dollar mergers in 2016, including ag leaders Monsanto and Bayer, telecom titans AT&T and Time Warner and fantasy sports giants FanDuel and Draft Kings. And with such marriages — which undergo scrutiny by…

January 27, 2017 | Two-time Super Bowl champion. Likely future Hall-of-Famer. Speaker at the three-day 2017 Republican retreat in Philadelphia. Peyton Manning, one of American football’s all-time greats, made his political debut Thursday night at the retreat, which was intended to solidify the Republican party’s game plan and unite the moving pieces of the GOP-controlled White House, Senate and…

January 6, 2017 | Chinese e-commerce megalith Ali Baba Group set a record for the world’s largest initial public offering in late 2014, raising a mind-blowing $25 billion. Since then, the company has stepped up its Washington presence. In 2015, for instance, it spent $410,000 on federal lobbying — but that increased to $640,000 in just the first three-quarters…

December 22, 2016 | Boy, has 2016 been a whirlwind adventure. If you’re like us, you have tabs and tabs of unread stories that caught your eye during the workday, but haven’t had time to dive into yet. Now that the holiday break is upon us, we’ll finally have the time to sink into that comfy chair by the…

December 14, 2016 | This op-ed appeared first on CNN.com. In his 2008 campaign, presidential candidate Barack Obama found that fiery speeches about the damaging role of special interest influence, lobbyists and the need to “change the culture in Washington” were enormously popular on the campaign trail. More recently, President-elect Donald Trump was even more successful in employing even…

December 13, 2016 | The Dakota Access Pipeline protesters just got a new reason to keep their Standing Rock encampment intact: former Texas governor and two-time presidential candidate Rick Perry, tapped today by President-elect Donald Trump to head his Energy Department. Never mind that Perry — who now becomes the second of Trump’s competitors named to his Cabinet (Ben…

December 9, 2016 | The 2016 election is over. Ballots have been cast, and (most) federal candidates know the outcome of their hard-fought races. Yet company PACs and even individuals are still writing checks to candidates’ campaign committees, even though the campaigns they’re funding are done. “Giving after the election clearly shows the donation is not given to support…

November 23, 2016 | For Americans seeking a little retail therapy after a stressful election season, help is on the way. But it’s not all about the stampede-inducing sales on Black Friday: Big-box stores and online marketplaces turn some of their profits into political clout through hefty campaign contributions and lobbying. The companies below use a variety of strategies to…

November 21, 2016 | Agriculture Department chiefs tend to come from the Midwest, the conservative-leaning region where much of the nation’s food is produced. Just two of the past eight secretaries have come from outside the area. Using the Census Bureau’s regional designations, 75 percent of agriculture secretaries have come from the Midwest since the department joined the Cabinet…

November 14, 2016 | Update Nov. 30: President-elect Donald Trump selected Steven Mnunchin as his Treasury Secretary. Read on for more information or see summary data on his contributions here. New administration, new Cabinet members. President-elect Donald Trump has already begun picking out his crew, but so far, his two concrete choices did not donate a penny to Trump’s election…

November 1, 2016 | We see you, sitting at your desk nibbling that “fun-size” candy bar, maybe leftover from the stash you gave away last night or even pilfered from your child’s hard-won haul. America’s confectioners and chocolatiers thank you. Halloween means big business for the candy industry. But beyond fueling costumed revelry every Oct. 31, candy makers and…

October 31, 2016 | Here’s the thing about dark money groups: Whatever their activity in real time, they always have an eye on how they’ll be describing it to the feds a year hence. What do we mean by that? Right now and in recent months, a number of politically active nonprofits have been trying to influence the outcome of elections…

October 19, 2016 | When the Republican-controlled Congress approved a landmark program in 2003 to help seniors buy prescription drugs, it slapped on an unusual restriction: The federal government was barred from negotiating cheaper prices for those medicines. Instead, the job of holding down costs was outsourced to the insurance companies delivering the subsidized new coverage, known as Medicare…

September 21, 2016 | Count former House Speaker John Boehner as the latest not-quite-a-lobbyist. For nearly a decade, the number of registered lobbyists has slipped each year. This summer, the figure finally dipped below 10,000 — the lowest it’s been since the Center for Responsive Politics began keeping track in 1998. And that drop in lobbyists has been accompanied…

September 15, 2016 | If you shuddered at the possibility of St. Louis-based crop titan Monsanto Co. taking over Swiss pesticides giant Syngenta AG last summer, you’re probably having a bad week: Monsanto has agreed to be acquired by German chemical conglomerate Bayer AG for $56.5 billion. Monsanto and Bayer are already two of the biggest agrichemical corporations in…

August 12, 2016 | Hillary Clinton’s record of bundlers contains some familiar names — though it’s not nearly as long as President Barack Obama’s list was at this point in 2012. Clinton has so far received at least $49.6 million from nearly 500 bundlers, or individual fundraisers who collect money from friends and acquaintances in order to deliver a candidate a…

August 9, 2016 | The lobbying industry may start arguing for its own bailout bill, given the relentless decline in reported spending for its services. The first quarter of 2016 was sluggish, the second similarly so. And with it came a pronounced dive in the number of active registered lobbyists. With 325 fewer lobbyists registered in the second quarter of…

August 5, 2016 | If you thought there was a lot of corporate money in politics, you haven’t seen the amount of cash that goes into sponsoring the U.S. Olympic games. Eleven multinational corporations each paid the International Olympic Committee an estimated $100 million for a four-year partnership that gives them coveted advertising rights during the global sporting competition. (International Olympics Committee…

July 26, 2016 | Many corporations reportedly decided not to support the Republican National Convention to distance themselves from the GOP nominee. Unfortunately for the Democrats, some have also declined to help bankroll the official festivities in Philadelphia. Walgreens, for instance, was a top player in funding convention host committees, or the entities that help organize the events, in earlier…

July 26, 2016 | If you thought Republicans partied hard in Cleveland, just wait till you hear what’s going down on the other side of the aisle. While the RNC shindigs seemed to suffer a slow start, the Democratic National Convention hosted a successful first 24 hours of cushy events that promoted mingling between those on the public payroll…

July 16, 2016 | Numerous Republican elites are ditching their party’s national convention in Cleveland this year. (And with some pretty lame excuses, too.) Boy, are they missing out. Sure, on what likely will be a fascinating main event, but mostly they’re skipping out on some of the biggest soirées of the season. Special interests, lobbyists, politicians and the media…

July 13, 2016 | When former Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) retired from politics at the end of 2010, more than $10 million sat in his campaign account. Now, after five years of work as a partner in a lobbying firm and an adviser for a private equity group, Bayh is mounting a bid to return to the Senate. News that he planned…

July 8, 2016 | The breadth of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal a decade ago brought down 21 lobbyists, government officials and aides. Abramoff served 43 months in prison for conspiring to defraud the government, corruption and defrauding his clients. Abramoff’s former colleague, Kevin A. Ring, thinks it would be hard now to pull off the kind of freewheeling…

June 9, 2016 | House lawmakers and their staffers used to make about 150 stops there a year on their privately sponsored jaunts around the world. Then came a massive ethics investigation, and they all stopped taking those free trips to Turkey — cold. Not a single House member or staffer has disclosed a privately sponsored trip to Turkey since the Office…

May 6, 2016 | Despite lobbying intensely for their interests in Congress, tobacco giants didn’t put up much of the fight against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s new rules on e-cigarettes, pipe tobacco and cigars, records show. That helped hand a victory to opponents concerned about the health effects of vaping. Announced Thursday, the rules impose a strong…

May 5, 2016 | Some of their clients appeared to have little to do with a federal agency that oversees airplane registration and certification, air traffic controllers and airport construction. But that didn’t stop lobbyists for Fluor Corp, an energy engineering company, and a handful of other companies that looked a little out of place in the expected cast of characters from lobbying on “Federal…

April 27, 2016 | Lobbying clients overall apparently weren’t looking to burst out of the gate in 2016, but outlays by some of the biggest companies in the pharmaceutical industry spiked during the year’s first quarter. Lobbying spending by companies and interest groups in the first three months of 2016 — the last year of an eight-year presidential administration…

April 7, 2016 | As a huge documents leak turns a spotlight on the global tax evasion industry, a Swiss company in hot water for similar activity is responsible for the greatest amount of known foreign-connected money in U.S. elections so far this cycle. News outlets brought together by the Washington, D.C.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists this week began…

April 1, 2016 | Last night, a video that captured presidential candidate Hillary Clinton pointing her finger at a climate change activist went viral. What got Clinton’s goat? An insinuation by the Sanders campaign that she accepts money from the fossil fuel industry. The campaigns are now embroiled in a back and forth on how much money Clinton takes from that…

March 15, 2016 | Already this NCAA men’s basketball season has proven to be one for the record books. We’ve had six different No. 1 ranked teams throughout the season. AP-ranked top 10 teams have lost a total of 74 times, the most since 1948, when the AP started conducting its poll. This is not to say that there…

March 11, 2016 | This story was cross-posted on TIME.com. Wrapped around D.C.’s northern tip and barely a precious stone’s throw from the U.S. Capitol, Maryland’s 8th Congressional District is one of the nation’s wealthiest: Census Bureau figures show its residents have a median household income of more than $94,000. Plenty of cash there, then, to fund the numerous…

March 1, 2016 | The financing of candidates’ campaigns has become a central theme of the primaries, although — aside from Trump’s truth-adjacent claims that he is self-financing his bid — Republicans mention the topic significantly less often than do Democrats. We offer this analysis of the veracity of statements by various candidates aiming for the White House. Sen.…

February 8, 2016 | It may seem a country long in love with cigars has little need for Swedish Snus dipping tobacco. But Swedish Match, by its own measure the third-largest manufacturer of the tobacco pouches in the U.S., doesn’t see it that way: Since 2011, the company has lobbied Congress more heavily than any other on trade with Cuba. Last week, the…

January 26, 2016 | We’re running out of synonyms for “decline.” For years, OpenSecrets Blog has reported essentially the same headline. Washington’s influence industry appears to be contracting, and the trend continued in 2015. Overall spending dipped just slightly last year, from $3.24 billion in 2014 to $3.20 billion, but the number became the latest data point in the long, slow slide in…

January 11, 2016 | After a season that brought just one defeat between them, the top two teams in college football will face off tonight in Phoenix for the national championship. Partisans of the University of Alabama and Clemson University (and we have one of each here at CRP) have placed their bets, put on their lucky underwear, prayed…

January 6, 2016 | As Kurdish Peshmerga forces battle to push back the Islamic State in Iraq, Kurdish political forces face a fight in Washington. Their combatants need heavy weapons the U.S. can’t give them directly — not yet, anyway. While it’s far too early to tell whether any congressional proponent can become a sort of Charlie Wilson for the…

December 17, 2015 | The oil industry‘s victory in the battle to lift the crude export ban didn’t come out of thin air. Opponents of the prohibition — long some of the biggest forces in the Washington influence game — began lobbying on the issue in earnest in early 2013, with the effort building until they accomplished their long-sought goal…

December 11, 2015 | Several incumbent lawmakers who are giving off the whiff of scandal have another worry on top of their legal woes: They aren’t keeping up with their challengers, many from within their own parties, in the fundraising arena. Take Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), who’s facing a rematch against Ro Khanna, a former Obama administration official whom…

November 24, 2015 | As they await January 2, 2016 — the day they can legally become lobbyists — former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and his former chief of staff, along with two more of Rogers’ onetime staffers, have found a use for some of the lawmaker’s $1.3 million leftover campaign funds. It doesn’t involve many contributions to other candidates or the…

November 24, 2015 | In politics, 2015 may be remembered as the year of Trump and Carson, Clinton and Sanders. In the business world, especially in the health care industry, it may be remembered as the year of the merger. But many politicians aren’t at all happy about the latest such effort: New York-based Pfizer‘s plan, announced Monday, to…

October 28, 2015 | Three nonprofit organizations that were tied up in a House Ethics Committee investigation of a 2013 congressional junket to Azerbaijan also sponsored 109 trips to Turkey for members of Congress and their staffers between 2011 and 2014, an OpenSecrets Blog review of congressional ethics filings shows. That included a free trip for the current chair of the Ethics…

October 27, 2015 | Someone must have called a three-month time out in Washington’s influence game during the late summer and early fall. Spending on lobbying was already sluggish this year, but outlays dropped from nearly $822 million between April 1 and June 30 to $738.6 million in the most recent quarter. While the third quarter is typically the slowest of…

October 21, 2015 | The top 10 lobbying spenders in the third quarter of 2015 reported paying lobbyists about $23 million less than the second quarter’s top 10 spenders did, the latest records show. In the second quarter, the top 10 spenders reported nearly $89 million in outlays, compared to almost $66 million between July 1 and Sept. 30…

October 16, 2015 | The vast majority of contributions to all the top presidential candidates have come from outside the Washington, D.C. metro area, despite the enthusiasm of lobbyists for several of the White House hopefuls. The candidate with the greatest support from the D.C. area was former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — but Washingtonians and their neighbors…

October 6, 2015 | For interest groups that sought to influence Washington’s thinking on the massive trade package set to bind together 40 percent of the world’s economy, Monday’s announcement of an agreement on the terms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership was a long time coming. Over eight years of negotiations, 487 clients paid lobbyists to meet with or contact lawmakers and administration officials…

October 6, 2015 | House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) may not be the least giving House speaker candidate, but favorite Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) still dwarfs him in fundraising by $22 million. On Thursday, Republicans will choose among Chaffetz, McCarthy and Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) to replace Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) as leader of the…

September 29, 2015 | No one in the House leadership race right now can touch soon-to-be-former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) when it comes to career fundraising prowess, but speaker candidate and current Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has also been magnanimous when it comes to giving back to the team. Over his career, Boehner gave a generous 42 percent of his…

September 23, 2015 | Congressional leadership is rushing to avoid a government shutdown, with federal funding for Planned Parenthood at the center of the debate. Over the summer, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called Planned Parenthood a “scandal-plagued political lobbying giant,” while pushing to defund the organization. A series of undercover videos of Planned Parenthood officials discussing how…

September 15, 2015 | For political candidates #blessed with huge followings on Twitter, the social media company just made it far easier to cash in on those retweeting and fave-ing digital crowds. Twitter today made possible instant political donations on its platform, according to a company press release. Using Square, a mobile, digital payment platform created by Twitter’s co-founder, campaigns can set up…

September 9, 2015 | Against the backdrop of a global slump in oil prices and a boom in American natural gas production, two energy sector lobbying groups may be set to merge, according to Politico. As a lobbying force, a merged American Petroleum Institute and America’s Natural Gas Alliance could jump to third-biggest spender in the oil and natural gas industry…

September 3, 2015 | A year after New York-based real estate company Delos Living committed $250,000 to a signature initiative of Hillary Clinton’s State Department, the Clinton Global Initiative partnered with Delos on a $5 million project to build a “world-class” soccer stadium in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, documents show. Working the players at both ends were two old Clinton hands — Virginia Gov.…

August 7, 2015 | Donald Trump was pretty much the only Republican presidential candidate at last night’s prime time Fox News debate to find fault with the current campaign finance system. It’s hard to know what he thinks the solution is, but something, according to Trump, is “broken.” I will tell you that our system is broken…I give to…

July 30, 2015 | Substantial spikes in outlays for lobbying by some of the biggest-spending clients could not keep overall second-quarter numbers from sliding below those of the first three months of the year — and in fact below those of any second quarter since at least 2010, with the exception of 2013. About $802 million was spent on…

July 29, 2015 | When former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) announced his run for the presidency back in June, he tried to cast himself as a Washington outsider — despite his family’s long-standing ties to the nation’s capital. “We are not going to clean up the mess in Washington by electing the people who either helped create it…

July 20, 2015 | Former governor Jeb Bush, (R-Fla.), wants more than a flash-freeze for aspiring lobbyists leaving Capitol Hill. On Monday, the former Florida governor called for a six-year ban on lobbying by former members of the House and Senate — three times as long as the current so-called “cooling-off” period for senators, a sixfold increase for House members…

July 16, 2015 | By Paul Lewis and Will Tucker in Washington. This piece was cross-posted with The Guardian. Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, the 2016 presidential candidates leading the money race in the Democratic and Republican fields, are amassing fortunes that will leave them politically indebted to some of the most influential lobbyists in Washington. Disclosures to the…

July 14, 2015 | Cuba will soon get an American ambassador and a full U.S. embassy in Havana for the first time in more than half a century. But on the path to normalized relations, there’s a $7 billion potential roadblock. And large U.S. corporations with big lobbying operations aren’t taking the lead on this one — individual Americans are. A group…

July 9, 2015 | Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush and other candidates made no secret of the fact they would accept contributions from registered lobbyists for 2016. Now, those donations from K Street are already rolling in, according to lobbying contribution records made available by the Senate Office of Public Records. The records cover the first half of 2015 and include…

June 30, 2015 | Just days after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges — which handed gay rights advocates their greatest victory yet, establishing a constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry — conservatives are finagling ways to circumvent the decision. In Texas, the state attorney general was encouraging county clerks to refuse to issue marriage…

June 26, 2015 | The U.S. senators running for president who made the most of their connections on K Street for campaign fundraising have also received a number of contacts, and campaign funds, from influencers working for foreign governments, an OpenSecrets Blog analysis of foreign lobbying data shows. Records show that over six years, several of the 2016 presidential candidates and their leadership PACs…

June 24, 2015 | The U.S. Supreme Court could rule as early as Thursday in the case of King v. Burwell, which deals with whether or not the Affordable Care Act allows tax credit subsidies to be given to individuals who buy health insurance in the dozens of states using the federal exchange. There’s little question that some Republicans…

June 19, 2015 | Three of the five U.S. senators running for president have made super-fans out of a few K Street lobbyists, an analysis of campaign finance data by OpenSecrets Blog shows. Republican Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have each raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from current or one-time federal lobbyists…

May 26, 2015 | Several lawmakers caught up in an investigation of their participation in a lavish overseas trip introduced legislation that would benefit the alleged host of their spring 2013 junket – the state-owned Azerbaijani oil company. Additionally, these lawmakers — and others on the trip — have received tens of thousands of dollars in donations from a…

May 22, 2015 | Memorial Day weekend is upon us, and that means lots of activity in the nation’s capital — including the National Memorial Day Parade. Organized by the American Veterans Center, the parade has numerous corporate sponsors. What could be more American? So it may seem a little odd that the event is also sponsored by two…

May 21, 2015 | As pressure increases for 2016 presidential contender Hillary Clinton to say where she stands on the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, her ties to avid TPP supporters won’t escape notice. One glaring example: A linked trifecta consisting of the TPP, the mega-investment firm Morgan Stanley, and the Clinton family that involves campaign contributions, former…

May 13, 2015 | A sheen of oil and chemicals wound down the Hudson River toward New York City this week after Saturday’s fire and explosion in a nuclear power plant transformer 40 miles upstream from the nation’s largest metropolitan center. Awkward timing: The explosion came as the plant’s owner, Entergy Corp., is lobbying federal lawmakers and agencies for…

May 12, 2015 | In the run-up to the FCC decision on net neutrality earlier this year, Verizon flexed its lobbying muscle in opposition to rules that would regulate the Internet as a public utility. The company has few peers when it comes to lobbying in the capital, but a network of smaller companies and interests backed the regs…

May 11, 2015 | If you’re hoping to run for federal office in 2016, prepare for a lot of travel and long-distance phone calls: Top-tier political fundraisers take in much, or even most, of their haul from other states. Every year, candidates from middle America make the trek to coastal cities and return with the resources they need to…

May 1, 2015 | In the months since President Obama announced his support for new retirement investment rules that would stop advisers from pushing high-fee plans on small-fry American investors, several major financial organizations have lobbied hard on a bill that would undermine the commander in chief’s agenda, according to recently released lobbying records for the first quarter of the year. The…

April 30, 2015 | In the 2014 elections, 31,976 donors — equal to roughly one percent of one percent of the total population of the United States — accounted for an astounding $1.18 billion in disclosed political contributions at the federal level. Those big givers — what we have termed the Political One Percent of the One Percent —…

April 24, 2015 | Some K-Street watchers predicted that the first quarter of 2015 would mark a return to boom times for lobbyists, what with a new GOP- dominated Congress digging in to legislation. But success for some of the top firms does not appear to have translated into a pickup overall. Once again, the first quarter of the…

April 21, 2015 | The three rising giants of tech all spent heavily on K Street in the first quarter of the year, marking perhaps a permanent change in the hierarchy of Silicon Valley's profile in Washington. Google and Facebook both spent close to record-breaking amounts on federal lobbying, Amazon.com smashed its previous quarterly record -- and all three surpassed first-quarter spending by Microsoft and Oracle, two high-tech names that have reliably dominated the industry's outlays on K Street.

April 15, 2015 | The campaign committee of former Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.), who resigned last month after allegations of improper spending by his congressional office, secretive investment deals with donors and fraudulent mileage reimbursement claims, filed its first quarter FEC report today, and it’s a portrait of a shining career stopped short. Stopped short by a gigantic legal…

April 3, 2015 | For more on private prisons in the United States, please visit CRP’s issue profile on the subject. Willacy County, a poor, agricultural community near Texas’ border with Mexico, has a $63 million problem that may only get worse if it can’t find a way to fill 2,800 beds with prisoners. The county has lost nearly…

March 30, 2015 | It has been nearly 15 years since a proposal to build wind turbines in federal waters was first floated by Cape Wind, but a Virginia power company with a much more substantial Washington money presence is poised to take the baton over the finish line. Dominion Resources, a company whose profits have charged up the…

March 24, 2015 | The word “science” is having an existential crisis in Washington. Two bills passed by the House last week that would redefine how the EPA considers science, and what science it can consider, have attracted huge interest from big EPA-regulated industries that have shown a preference for contributing to GOP campaigns — and to the handful of Democrats…

March 20, 2015 | A bill that would change chemical regulations may or may not have been written by a leading trade organization affected by the rules — but no matter the original source of the bill’s text, it’s a fact that the sponsors of the legislation have received plenty of campaign contributions from the group and its member…

March 18, 2015 | According to the American Gaming Association, over 40 million Americans are filling out brackets in preparation for the March Madness tournament, which kicks off Thursday. Many will play it safe, listen to the analysts, and bet on Kentucky for the championship. But that’s boring, and the NCAA tournament has a penchant for producing upsets. So…

March 13, 2015 | If you pay attention to congressional Twitter feeds — or just have a sweet tooth — you may know that this is the week that lawmakers have been revealing their true partisan preferences: Thin Mints or Samoas? Girl Scouts have been making their rounds through the Capitol, selling cookies to lawmakers who then snap photos…

March 12, 2015 | While campaign workers (and increasingly television viewers) breathe a sigh of relief the morning after an election, for lobbyists it’s time to get back to work to bolster relationships with incumbents or begin them with new members. That’s often done in the form of contributions (surprise!). According to an OpenSecrets.org analysis, 948 lobbyists wrote more…

March 9, 2015 | The Justice Department reportedly is on the brink of filing criminal corruption charges against Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) for allegedly pushing the interests of a Florida ophthalmologist in exchange for gifts and contributions. Menendez says he’s done nothing wrong, and that Salomon Melgen’s generosity over the years was spurred because the two are friends. Friends…

February 27, 2015 | A profile of net neutrality’s biggest opponents is available here. Yesterday we profiled the top four opponents of net neutrality who, though the FCC’s decision to regulate the Internet as a public utility has been made, are likely to continue to play a role as the decision is contested in the courts and perhaps in…

February 26, 2015 | Update: A profile of the biggest supporters of net neutrality is available here. The Federal Communications Commission just approved new rules that allow it to regulate the Internet like a utility, establishing net neutrality. But only for now. The move has some very powerful opponents, starting with the cable and telecom companies — companies that control most…

February 25, 2015 | The two Republican members of the Federal Communications Commission who have asked for a delay in the agency’s vote tomorrow (Thursday) on net neutrality rules both have past connections to big money interests opposed to the rules. On the other hand, so does the FCC chairman, whose proposal is on the table. At stake is…

February 25, 2015 | Even when they don’t head straight to K Street, it’s safe to say that former members of Congress don’t forget their colleagues — nor are they consigned by them to history. For one thing, many ex-lawmakers find themselves involuntarily retired with money left in their campaign accounts and leadership PACs — money that can be used…

February 13, 2015 | Congress is once again considering whether (and how) to tax the ability of Americans to make late-night Amazon purchases in their underwear, and the companies most interested in the outcome have been generous to the lawmakers leading the charge. Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) this week reintroduced the Internet Tax Freedom Forever Act. The bill,…

February 10, 2015 | Years of cultivating relationships with Republican lawmakers and supporting their campaign committees financially may begin to pay off tomorrow, as the GOP now controls the Senate — and thus, the Environment and Public Works Committee. That means some of the industry’s closest friends will lead the questioning of EPA officials at an oversight hearing tomorrow to discuss…

February 10, 2015 | Craft beer is everywhere, and while that may seem like a good thing for beer lovers, the giants of the industry aren’t thrilled. This isn’t just a bar fight, either — it’s a tension that often plays out on Capitol Hill. With a new Congress, the debate over Sierra Nevada v. Bud is fermenting anew —…

February 5, 2015 | December’s cromnibus spending package was a bonanza for lobbyists, with the defense, banking, and health care industries especially flexing their influence muscle to make sure their priorities were on the agenda. The Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act (H.R. 83), or Cromnibus, which combined a short-term continuing resolution on Department of Homeland Security funding with broader…

January 30, 2015 | If writing checks to politicians and political causes is any indicator of how well a team will do in a Super Bowl, the Patriots should start dusting off this year’s Vince Lombardi trophy — but it’s not going to be a blowout. Really, it would come down to a battle between the owners, and it would be close…

January 28, 2015 | K Street may not have pulled out of its slide quite yet, but a close read of the numbers suggests that things could be returning to normal. That’s a new normal, however, without the big jumps in client spending that helped propel lobbying income to new heights just a few years ago. The last several…

January 26, 2015 | Despite some last-minute jostling in the fourth quarter, most lobbying firms maintained their spots in the revenue standings in 2014. That said, some firms had a great year, more than doubling their income, and others felt the sting of growing pains from mergers or just a shortage of free-spending clients. Overall, la crème de la crème stayed…

January 23, 2015 | It wasn’t a great year for Washington lobbyists, nor was it a terrible year. But according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis of the now-complete 2014 lobbying disclosure data, federal lobbying expenditures declined yet again. Largely to blame for the drop was a weak fourth quarter, which comes as a surprise given the flurry…

January 15, 2015 | Last year was full of data breaches. From JPMorgan Chase to Sony to Apple nothing seemed safe. Not your credit cards. Not your iTunes account. And President Obama seemed intent on addressing concerns over the ruptures Tuesday when he indicated that he would send a package to Capitol Hill to tackle some key cybersecurity issues. Among…

January 14, 2015 | Wall Street did its part to make 2014 the most expensive midterm election ever, outpacing its 2010 total and once again putting the bulk of its financial muscle behind GOP candidates and groups. Donors from the securities and investment industry, otherwise known as Wall Street, contributed a total of $184 million to candidates, parties and outside…

January 6, 2015 | Seven years after President George W. Bush signed the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA) into law and then-Sen. Barack Obama, (D-Ill.) declared it to be “the most sweeping ethics reform since Watergate,” a joint analysis by the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics suggests the effort may have misfired. A key…

December 23, 2014 | It was the best of years or it was the worst of years, depending on your perspective. The Supreme Court’s McCutcheon decision and Congress’ green light allowing national party committees to set up additional accounts — and accept a lot more money — were the big legal developments of the year in terms of political…

December 22, 2014 | This report is the third (part 1/part 2) in a series examining the years-long decline in both spending on lobbyists and the number of active lobbyists. Overall spending on lobbying has been on a downward trajectory since 2010 and the number of active lobbyists has seen an even longer-term and more drastic drop. Previous entries…

December 20, 2014 | The U.S. government Friday officially accused North Korea of being behind the recent, massive hack of emails and other confidential information at Sony Pictures, and the studio nixed its planned release of "The Interview." But this isn't the first time that Sony has been sweating an embarrassing data breach.

December 12, 2014 | In the wake of the passage of the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill last night, it’s no easy thing sorting out the winners and the losers. The wide variety of riders and add-ons means a slew of interest groups can claim victory, even if it’s hard to pin down exactly who should claim credit for stuffing the…

December 3, 2014 | This article was cross-posted at TIME.com. The defeat of the Keystone XL pipeline bill in the Senate last month may have been viewed as a blow to Sen. Mary Landrieu‘s re-election bid, but her battle to get the bill passed was warmly received by members of the oil and gas industry, including Keystone’s parent company.…

November 20, 2014 | As Goldman Sachs prepares for more unwelcome publicity tomorrow at a Senate Banking Committee hearing, these things are certain: The financial giant’s many lobbyists will be working in overdrive, and the company’s million-dollar PAC will be considering writing checks to a host of lawmakers — some of them on the House or Senate Banking Committees.…

November 10, 2014 | It may be too early to call 2014 the year that K Street’s long decline ended, but the most recent round of reports suggest at least a leveling off. Third quarter 2014 lobbying expenditures totaled $771.9 million, which is only a bit lower than outlays during the same period in previous years. And spending for the…

October 31, 2014 | This story is cross-posted at TIME.com With just a few days remaining in the first quarter of 2014, Mary Landrieu did something generous: The embattled Democratic senator from Louisiana, herself in the midst of an exceedingly tough re-election race, used her leadership PAC to give $5,000 to the campaign of Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who…

October 1, 2014 | It takes a lot of networking to route phone calls for the U.S. government. To that end, two companies vying for a nearly half-billion dollar contract to run the Number Portability Administration Center have brought on board new teams of lobbyists to win regulators over. One of the firms being considered for the contract by…

September 19, 2014 | President Obama declared on Tuesday that the United States would send troops, medical equipment and aid workers to Western African countries ravaged by Ebola, a virus that has killed more than 2,400 people. “We know that if we take the proper steps, we can save lives,” he said. “But we have to act fast.” And yet,…

September 15, 2014 | It’s hard to overstate the significance to K Street of the death of Thomas Hale Boggs Jr. today. For almost as long as the Center for Responsive Politics has tracked data, Boggs was, literally, the biggest name in lobbying. Boggs joined a small law firm in 1966 and with two other partners built it into the…

September 2, 2014 | Americans who have taken advantage of the Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year to toss aside overall political contribution limits are one in a million. Actually, they’re slightly fewer than one in a million. Of the 318 million people in the U.S., a whopping 310 donors have given more than the total $123,200 they were allowed to…

August 18, 2014 | This report is the second (part 1/part 3) in a series examining the years-long decline in both spending on lobbyists and the number of active lobbyists. As the total amount of money spent on lobbying continues to fall, many analysts — including the staff at the Center for Responsive Politics — cite congressional gridlock as…

August 12, 2014 | Facing an onslaught of challenges to its long-held rules enforcing student amateurism, the National Collegiate Athletic Association is going pro in the lobbying arena. After hiring an outside firm, the NCAA has been doling out record amounts on K Street this year.

August 11, 2014 | A plagiarism scandal that drove Sen. John Walsh (D-Mont.) to drop his re-election bid Thursday was a major blow to the Democratic Party, still intent on proving it can keep its majority in the Senate. It also constituted a major financial loss for Democrats who’d placed their bets on Walsh and saw them evaporate long…

July 29, 2014 | Studies have confirmed several statistics about the group known as millennials, the generation born between 1980 and 2000. They’re on track to be the most educated generation to date, they’re getting married significantly later in life, and they’re in debt. They’re also the most civically engaged generation the United States has ever seen. Millennials are…

July 22, 2014 | During Facebook’s early years, the company barely noticed Washington, taking a full five years to spend its first dime on federal lobbying. Then, the company’s investment in the capital began growing rapidly, alongside its revenue and ambitions. Now, as a full-fledged corporate behemoth, with a billionaire CEO recently interested in politics, the company’s lobbying has exploded, making even its recent expenditures look small.…

July 18, 2014 | Recent upheaval in the tobacco lobbying world comes simultaneously with the announcement that two giant cigarette producers– Reynolds American and Lorillard Inc — had agreed on a $27.4 billion merger. As news of the potential deal was breaking, a throng of Lorrillard lobbyists defected from Dickstein Shapiro to set up shop at Greenberg Traurig LLP,…

July 18, 2014 | Maybe he got sentimental reading the hundreds of pages of evidence and findings about his travels with Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), released last month by the House Ethics Committee. Maybe he was worried about Young’s finances after all the investigations. For whatever reason, Randy DeLay is back — and still sticking with Young. On June 30,…

July 15, 2014 | In 2004, Randy DeLay was asked by the commissioners of the Port of Brownsville, Texas, to justify his $25,000 monthly lobbying bills. Why was he submitting such high travel expenses for what appeared to be junkets? DeLay, the younger brother of then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), explained to them that lobbying is expensive work, especially when you’re trying to…

July 11, 2014 | The summer is heating up, with temperatures in the 90s this week from coast to coast. It’s no wonder the beer, wine and liquor industry look forward to summer all year long. Sales soar during this season as Americans purchase alcoholic beverages, especially beer, to beat the heat and celebrate the holidays. Earlier this year, a…

July 8, 2014 | Despite objections from a handful of Democrats, the Senate voted on Monday to move forward with a pro-hunting bill that has delighted most gun rights groups, including the National Rifle Association. Introduced by embattled incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), the Bipartisan Sportsmen’s Act (S. 2363) would unlock funding to build shooting ranges on public land while easing hunting restrictions. But…

July 7, 2014 | Money-in-politics data geeks have been abuzz lately about a new plug-in called Greenhouse. Created by 16-year-old Nick Rubin, Greenhouse uses data from OpenSecrets.org to enable users to check a politician’s finances and top contributors by hovering over his or her name on any web page. This new tool isn’t the only one using Center for…

June 18, 2014 | The ongoing FIFA World Cup is an occasion for fans to congregate in bars and yell at the television — and a time when multinational corporations get to market their brands far and wide through players’ jerseys and billboards on the field. But the official sponsors of the championship are also key players in another arena: K Street. Six companies…

June 13, 2014 | Though it has now come to a screeching finish, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.)’s leadership position in the House has brought him enduring connections, political clout and insider knowledge — in other words, potent K Street cred. “He brings incredible contacts with the whole Republican caucus in both houses” of Congress, said Ivan H. Adler, a…

June 11, 2014 | House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s campaign spent more money on food — $168,000 on steakhouses alone — than Dave Brat did on his entire campaign. But it wasn’t just steak. On April 6, the Cantor campaign spent $790 at Proof, a downtown D.C. restaurant, where the cheapest entree on the menu is a “Napoleon of…

June 5, 2014 | New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer has done his darned best to earn the title of “buzzkill“: He led the crackdown on Four Loko caffeine-laced malt beverages, declared war on the powdered liquor product Palcohol, and — this week — drove the summer boozy slushy fad called Phrosties to extinction. But meanwhile, he’s also received…

May 30, 2014 | Mississippi can lay claim to some of the GOP’s ugliest infighting leading up to Tuesday’s Senate primary vote, marked by a proxy war between the conservative establishment and tea party affiliates that’s triggered a torrent of spending by outside groups. Poll results have been all over the map in recent weeks, indicating that state senator and…

May 27, 2014 | The merger of Patton Boggs LLP and Squire Sanders to create Squire Patton Boggs spawns a new legal superstore. It also creates a new power source of campaign contributions and lobbying. Since 1989, the two component firms have combined for total contributions of more than $13 million to federal candidates, party committees, leadership PACs and…

May 22, 2014 | Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) doesn’t have much to worry about this year — she easily dispatched a primary challenger earlier this month, and her Democratic opponent has raised just $3,000. So why does OpenSecrets.org consider the race for North Carolina’s Fifth Congressional District a “Hot Race”? As it turns out, Foxx’s campaign fundraising raised a red flag when we…

May 16, 2014 | Matt Bevin was considered, at one time, a possibly serious threat to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). No more: When Republican voters go to the polls on Tuesday to select their nominee, McConnell will likely win by a wide margin. Still, the early threat froom Bevin has helped push fundraising in the race sky-high. The two GOP…

May 14, 2014 | The announcement earlier this year of plans to merge Comcast and Time Warner Cable raised red flags for many telecom industry watchers, as the result would be a mega-company with corresponding power over cable TV consumers and immense influence in Washington. But this week brought market-moving news of another potential industry merger — this time a…

May 12, 2014 | Politics has always been partly a game of chance. And when it comes to the politics of gambling policy, where the industry’s high-rolling campaign donors are anteing up for a clash over online gaming, it’s anybody’s guess who the big winners will be. The gaming industry has long had a big presence in Washington.…

May 1, 2014 | Lobbying firms hoping for an uptick in spending by their clients had a disappointing first three months this year, an analysis by OpenSecrets.org shows: It was the worst first quarter in the last four years, continuing the downward slide of K Street spending. Recently filed lobbying disclosure reports show that a total of $811.8 million…

April 22, 2014 | We're proud to be considered for a Webby Award. However, we need your votes to win the People's Voice portion of the prize. Need to be persuaded? Here's a quick look at the new, groundbreaking, or just plain cool additions we've made to OpenSecrets.org this year. Now vote, please!

March 21, 2014 | Most panelists at the Center for Responsive Politics "Roadblocks to Transparency" conference Thursday weren't optimistic that disclosure in the money-in-politics arena was going to improve much.

March 14, 2014 | Rep. Mike Quigley's Transparency in Government Act would give the public greater access to information on lobbying, lawmakers' personal financial reports, filings by tax-exempt nonprofits and more.

March 13, 2014 | We're hosting a mini-conference on roadblocks to transparency in the U.S. government -- and proposing some solutions. Experts from CRP, Campaign Legal Center, Covington & Burling, Center for Public Integrity, CQ Roll Call and more will address the issues in panels on campaign finance, lobbying, and the growth of dark money. Sign up now!

March 12, 2014 | It's hard to sort out lobbyists' motivations for making campaign contributions. But the top recipients of their donations so far this cycle are a bit of a surprise: Top Republican leadership and at-risk Senate Democrats.

February 20, 2014 | Longtime Sen. Thad Cochran has the Washington ties you'd expect given how long he's been in the nation's capital. But challenger Chris McDaniel is getting lots of help from outside his state's borders, too.

February 19, 2014 | Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is about to step into the chairmanship for the Senate Committee on Finance, while Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) will take his place as chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Who are their biggest donors?

February 10, 2014 | One of the sponsors of the "Government By the People Act" relies almost completely on individual contributions when it comes to campaign funds. What industries give to him most heavily?

January 15, 2014 | In anticipation of the Supreme Court's ruling in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, the Center for Responsive Politics and the Sunlight Foundation have teamed up to look at the deep-pocketed donors who could give even more if the justices strike down another limit on the amount of money in U.S. politics.

January 15, 2014 | The betting is that "Blackfish," which raises all kinds of questions about marine theme parks like SeaWorld, will turn up Thursday on the list of Oscar nominees for Best Documentary Feature. Here's how SeaWorld has tried to make its case in Washington since the killing of one of its trainers in 2010.

November 25, 2013 | An ex-employee of National Right to Work and its Iowa affiliate claims that the groups provided free labor to conservative state legislative candidates as well as candidate mailers written, produced and mailed by the anti-union groups -- allegations that, if true, could to violate state law. Beyond that, they told the IRS they engaged in no political activity, a statement that appears to be false.

November 8, 2013 | The initial public offering for Twitter went off without a hitch yesterday, but the company also recently made a much quieter debut in Washington. Last month the company filed its first ever lobbying report. It was modest, but that could change if the social network company follows the lead of its compadres in the computers and Internet industry.

October 24, 2013 | Heritage Action, one of the biggest advocates of defunding Obamacare even if it meant a government shutdown, raised close to half of its 2012 revenue from donors giving less than $5,000.

October 24, 2013 | While the company said it had no position on linking government funding with Obamacare defunding, it went to bat for tying an increase in the debt ceiling to a 10-year debt reduction plan.

October 11, 2013 | Despite the fact that Koch Industries has attempted to distance itself from the budget and debt ceiling hardliners in Congress this week, there are ties between the company and the Republicans who have been pushing their leadership to hang tough.
As it turns out, Koch Industries' corporate PAC is a big supporter of many of the 20 "dissident" Republican House members who have been identified as the biggest thorns in the side of the Republican leadership on the shutdown and the debt ceiling.

October 10, 2013 | Like a growing number of business leaders, Honeywell CEO David Cote isn't happy with the GOP dissidents willing to entertain the notion of defaulting on the national debt. If Honeywell's PAC starts withholding campaign funds, that could be serious trouble for some lawmakers in the group.

September 27, 2013 | Chinese Internet giant Alibaba has Wall Street salivating over its recent announcement that it would be issuing an IPO. Only a year ago, however, the company was busy lobbying the White House and Capitol Hill in order to be taken off a list of "notorious markets."

September 26, 2013 | Sen. Ted Cruz's marathon speechifying seemed meant to please a certain subset of the Texan's supporters -- and it did. But what about his corporate contributors? They're big backers of the Republican establishment, which didn't much like his "filibuster."

September 23, 2013 | Congress and the defense sector were in the spotlight at the start of this month, as calls both for and against a military strike on Syria overtook the headlines before August recess was even over. Which members of Congress are the sector's favorites?

September 19, 2013 | Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey's comments about congressional staffers' ability to leave Capitol Hill and go "make $500,000 a year" as lobbyists drew the wrong kind of attention to the lawmaker, who is hoping to become a senator next year. He is, of course, partly right: His former chief-of-staff is now a lobbyist for, among others, a health care company that is Gingrey's biggest donor.

September 13, 2013 | The National Association of Federal Credit Unions hosted a "fly-in" this week, bringing members to Washington to visit Capitol Hill and directly lobby their representatives. The American Banker's Association was not amused. However concerned big banks might be that credit unions are growing elsewhere, when it comes to Washington -- it's not much of a competition.

September 9, 2013 | NASA's rocket launch Friday from the outskirts of Washington made for great photo ops, but was also a reminder of the relationships the company has built on Capitol Hill with key lawmakers.

September 5, 2013 | Members of Congress spend much of their time chasing campaign cash and struggling to boost their war chests to fight off the next rival. And for a variety of reasons, an increasing number find themselves with flush bank accounts when their congressional careers are over, keeping them high on their former colleagues' call lists.

August 22, 2013 | The NASDAQ stock exchange took an abrupt break this afternoon, halting all trading because of a problem in the system that records trades. According to OpenSecrets.org data, cybersecurity law and the software and procedures required to run a safe, secure and transparent trading exchange have been the topics of an ongoing conversation between the NASDAQ and Washington.

August 6, 2013 | Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, let his money do the talking yesterday when it was announced he was buying the Washington Post for $250 million in cash, but offered little comment on what his plans for the newspaper are. Although he just bought one of the most prominent chroniclers of Washington politics, Bezos is not a man known for using his money to make political points.

July 31, 2013 | Is big business backing off K Street? After years of dominating the scene, several traditionally powerful lobbying interests have significantly cut back their spending in the second quarter of 2013. A list of industries that cut their spending most between the first three months of the year and the second three months reads like a Who's Who of lobbying heavyweights: Pharmaceuticals, electric utilities, oil and gas, finance and credit, telecom and agricultural services led the roster.

July 29, 2013 | The Prevent All Soring Tactics Act (H.R. 1518, or the PAST Act), sponsored by Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), aims to do away with the painful practices that give some walking horses their high-stepping gait. Lobbyists on both sides of the issue have saddled up.

July 25, 2013 | Second quarter lobbying reports show more declines in spending. With a couple of exceptions -- the American Hospital Association and NCTA -- cutbacks were the rule from April through June.

July 23, 2013 | The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has spent more than $1 billion lobbying members of Congress and other officials since 1998 - by far a greater amount than any other organization over the period. The Chamber has no rivals in terms of raw resources devoted to lobbying - and may also have little competition when it comes to overall influence on the Hill.

July 11, 2013 | Animal welfare groups recently won a major victory when the head of the National Institutes of Health announced the agency would significantly curtail its use of great apes in scientific research. NIH's action follows the failure of congressional legislation in a climate where animal rights groups could never keep up with groups -- including drugmakers -- that opposed the bill, particularly when it came to spending on lobbying and campaign contributions.

July 2, 2013 | Fancy dinners with members of Congress are all but verboten for lobbyists these days. But they can still make an impression with campaign contributions. An OpenSecrets.org analysis has crunched the available numbers from the 2014 election cycle.

June 17, 2013 | As firefighters in Western states continue to battle wildfires, lobbyists in Washington are fighting their own battle over how to handle fires like the Black Forest blaze in the future.

June 17, 2013 | Market prices for liquefied natural gas are typically higher abroad, and API's member companies could reap vast profits overseas. But the fight to drop export restrictions is pitting them against another strong presence in Washington with whom they are sometimes allied: domestic users of their products, including DOW Chemical.

May 24, 2013 | Lobbyists from the banking industry had significant input into the wording of a bill exempting certain kinds of trades from regulation under the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul. Players in the industry also had their checkbooks out for lawmakers on the House Financial Services Committee in the first quarter of this year.

May 21, 2013 | Last week's collapse of a massive precious metals mine in Indonesia, which killed at least 17 workers, brought unwanted attention to the American company that owns the facility, Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold. But the company is already well-known to many here in Washington: Its top executives, as well as the company PAC, contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars each election cycle to help fuel congressional campaigns.

May 14, 2013 | A mash-up of data on bill sponsorships, campaign contributions and lobbying shows that in some cases, lawmakers have sponsored bills of interest to just one entity -- which happens to be a top contributor to the lawmaker's campaign fund.

May 2, 2013 | It was the National Association for Gun Rights -- not the NRA -- that drove the spike in lobbying by gun rights groups in the first quarter of the year. The group had never lobbied at the federal level. Plus, OpenSecrets Blog finds more ties between the group and Ron and Rand Paul.

May 2, 2013 | Following a pattern that has been playing out for the last few years, spending on federal lobbying declined in the first quarter of 2013. There were exceptions in connection with the hottest issues of the past three months, like the gun control debate; but overall, most organizations that traditionally spend big on lobbyists have cut back once again.

April 25, 2013 | Plenty of companies and trade groups are weighing in against being required to disclose their contributions to secretive tax-exempt groups that are active in the political arena. Just such a proposal may be coming from the SEC, and a bill is pending in Congress that would address the issue too.

April 23, 2013 | With the Montana Democrat's departure, Capitol Hill loses a prodigious fundraiser, and one who wasn't embarrassed about his close ties to lobbyists: They provided him more than $1 million in contributions since 1990.

April 22, 2013 | Not surprisingly -- and per the usual pattern -- lobbying expenditures by pro-gun rights groups in the first quarter of 2013 far surpassed that of groups on the other side. But there wasn't as much of a jump in that spending as some expected, given the Sandy Hook shootings.

April 2, 2013 | Generic drugmakers win one over the brand pharmaceutical manufacturers in the Indian Supreme Court, but lobbying reports show that the battle over patent protection rages on in the U.S., too.

March 20, 2013 | This morning we chatted with a panel of experts on why the number of registered lobbyists has declined in recent years. Is it because there are really fewer lobbyists or are more just flying under the radar. The live chat is over, but you can still watch the replay and see what our panel had to say. Also, for more details on the issue, read our newly released report.

March 20, 2013 | Spending on lobbying as well as the number of active lobbyists was down in 2012. But nearly half of lobbyists who were active in 2011 but reported no lobbying in 2012 continued to work for the same employers -- suggesting that many have simply avoided the reporting limits while still contributing to lobbying efforts.

March 11, 2013 | Companies turn to lobbyists to weigh in on the terms of the 11-nation trading alliance. And it looks like a major lobbying firm, the Podesta Group, is poised to cash in with the launch of a new global arm that will influence the TPP discussion and other international projects.

March 8, 2013 | Organizing for Action, the new group put together by top Obama campaign aides to carry on where his campaign finished, has promised to be a new type of politically active nonprofit. Like the Obama campaign, OFA has said it will not take money from federally registered lobbyists. While limiting the role that registered lobbyists play in political fundraising efforts might seem to be an effective way to curb the influence of "special interests," we wondered how important lobbyists really are in the outside money game. Are their donations to super PACs and other post-Citizens United groups like OFA really over the top?

March 4, 2013 | Skirmishing over proposals to overhaul the nation's immigration laws has begun in earnest, but lobbying on the issue picked up months ago. Last year more clients reported lobbying on immigration than in any year since 2008.

February 19, 2013 | Justice Clarence Thomas was on the bench today hearing a case involving seed patents held by his previous employer, Monsanto. Thomas aside, though, Monsanto has plenty of friends in Washington: It's the big guy on the agribusiness block when it comes to providing campaign cash and lobbying muscle.

February 18, 2013 | Few states -- in fact only one -- beat Texas when it comes to providing political cash, but Democrats, with the help of demographics, will have to work hard to match Republicans in reeling it in. Also, Carnival Cruise Lines has taken its share of lumps lately, which may have some connection to its ramped up spending on Washington lobbying.

February 7, 2013 | Sen. Robert Menendez' ties to a donor who's under FBI investigation are deeper than initially reported: According to the Washington Post, he contacted top federal health officials twice over their finding that the donor overbilled Medicare. And research by OpenSecrets.org shows the donor and his wife each contributed to Menendez' legal defense fund

February 6, 2013 | Rep. Tammy Duckworth was mentioned in the news more in her first month of office than any other House freshman, according to a University of Minnesota study. She also spent more in her campaign than her colleagues in the class of '12.

February 1, 2013 | We know, we know: 2012 is over, done, in the rear-view mirror. But in the campaign finance world, midnight last night in many ways marked a reckoning for 2012 politicians, super PACs and others involved in the election.

January 31, 2013 | Spending on lobbying was down across the board in 2012, but no interest group tightened the purse strings more than the education industry. In 2011, the industry, which includes both for-profit and nonprofit colleges and universities and trade associations that represent both, reported spending about $106 million on lobbying expenses. In 2012 it spent only $88.6 million -- a decline of more than $17.6 million

January 31, 2013 | The FEC's higher contribution limits may be better news for Republicans than Dems: far more contributors maxed out to Romney than Obama. Also, Urban Outfitters' new CEO leans right, a distinct change from the chain's last leader.

January 29, 2013 | Lobbying in Washington declined for the second straight year, to its lowest level since 2007. Wall Street, insurance, lawyers and law firms and other industries all took hits, but none more so than education. Patton Boggs remained the top lobbying firm in terms of billings, but even it saw less revenue than it did in 2011.

January 25, 2013 | Good government types, labor unions and others have lobbied to change filibuster rules. Also, some of the clients of Mary Jo White's law firm will be watching her actions at the SEC, if she's confirmed as chief, with more than passing interest.

January 24, 2013 | For both the defense sector and the pharmaceutical industry, 2012 lobbying numbers declined over 2011 -- despite a rush to keep the government from plunging over the fiscal cliff, taking many private sector entities with it.

January 18, 2013 | The Lance Armstrong Foundation, which in November officially changed its name to the Livestrong Foundation, has spent over $2 million lobbying on funding for cancer research since 2001, and Boeing has some good friends in Washington help it battle the turbulence its currently experiencing.

January 10, 2013 | Barack Obama's choice for Treasury Secretary has a revolving door past, the new executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee has a bruising 2012 to overcome and the battle for Herbalife may go through Washington.

January 9, 2013 | Like everything else this election cycle, the inauguration festivities for President Barack Obama's second term will likely cost a fortune. The Center for Responsive Politics' new inaugural donor tracker compiles everything we know about the individuals and companies helping Obama's Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC) pick up the tab.

January 3, 2013 | Will Scott Brown jump back into the frying pan so soon after his bruising, and incredibly costly, 2012 race? A big factor is whether he thinks he can raise the money for a third race in four years. Also, how the fiscal cliff legislation came to include tax credits benefiting many large corporations, and why New Jersey and New York matter to lawmakers like John Boehner.

January 2, 2013 | Former Sen. Bob Bennett chafes at the restrictions on former lawmakers becoming lobbyists. He's registering on the very day his two-year cooling-off period ends, and he's sounding off.

December 26, 2012 | It's that time of the year where retiring members of Congress or those who were forced out by voters begin looking for jobs elsewhere -- such as K Street. Making the jump from lawmaker to lobbyist is lucrative. Some members aren't even waiting for their terms to expire.

December 11, 2012 | Some of the nation's biggest banks are defendants in a whole new round of lawsuits over subprime mortgages, with potential liability in the hundreds of billions. WalMart is accused of illegal lobbying in India, though it all seems to be a misunderstanding.

December 3, 2012 | This year's Farm Bill, including its food stamp provisions, stalled in the House before the election. But the program has a big constituency, and it's not just poor people -- something lawmakers looking for budget cuts might want to keep in mind.

December 3, 2012 | J.C. Watts, who's being mentioned as a possible RNC chair, has some strong ties to shadow money. A dialysis company that's accused of defrauding Medicare and Medicaid has invested heavily in Washington. And Bloomberg's pro-gun control super PAC likely had an impact.

November 29, 2012 | BP is banned from government contracts for now, but will that affect its slow climb back in the political realm? Also, what to do next if you're a super PAC or other independent-expenditure group? Why not try lobbying?

November 19, 2012 | California has a liberal reputation, and indeed the Golden State's Republicans are struggling -- at the polls and at campaign fundraising; President Barack Obama rides high on digital fundraising and the president's visit to Burma prompts a look at who's lobbying on the U.S. relationship with the former military dictatorship.

November 15, 2012 | Sen. John McCain says he'll oppose Susan Rice as Secretary of State, though not because she was an Obama bundler in 2008. Also, we know about presidential bundlers (well, not so much about Romney's), but what about those who bundled for incoming lawmakers?

November 5, 2012 | The debate over the role of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in post-disaster cleanups continues in Washington long after the crisis has passed. Also, the Virginia Senate race has cost more than $86 million, with outside spending making up the majority of that.

November 1, 2012 | Flood insurance is a popular topic for lobbying; the group Protect the Harvest isn't what it seems; and Sam Zell, philanthropist and Republican donor (but you might not want to sell him your newspaper company).

October 31, 2012 | Nearly $40 million has poured into the Senate race in Montana, where there are three heads of cattle for every human one. That makes it one of the most expensive contests in the nation.

October 31, 2012 | Earlier this year, the Center for Responsive Politics estimated that the 2012 election would cost $5.8 billion -- an estimate that already made it the most expensive in history -- but with less than a week to go before the election, CRP is revising the estimate upwards. According to CRP's new analysis of Federal Election Commission data, this election will likely cost $6 billion.

October 22, 2012 | With Election Day looming and the need for cash urgent, core constituencies for each of the presidential campaigns stepped up their support in the month of September. But each candidate also made headway fundraising from industries that have been stalwarts for their opponents.

October 17, 2012 | Sixty-three registered lobbyists have raised $14.3 million for the Romney campaign, and despite the campaign's refusal to publicly disclose its list of bundlers -- elite fundraisers who tap their personal and professional networks to raise funds. In addition, we've identified 37 of Romney's other, non-lobbyist bundlers, whose names the campaign has refused to disclose.

October 17, 2012 | With support from casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and a board laden with well-connected luminaries of GOP fundraising, the Republican Jewish Coalition is making a strong push to turn just enough Jews against Obama to deny him re-election.

October 12, 2012 | Romney may have tried to tack to the center on abortion, but less than 48 hours later he was back to attacking Planned Parenthood -- which has shown its muscle as an outside spending group this cycle.

October 2, 2012 | Billionaire Georgian businessman Bidzina Ivanishvili appears set to be the new prime minister of his country. That'll have repercussions on K Street, as well: Ivanishvili has spent some of his millions hiring lobbyists to represent him in the U.S.

September 21, 2012 | The conservative Club for Growth takes aim at Lindsey Graham, while Tim Pawlenty takes a lucrative new job -- and removes himself from consideration for a Romney cabinet slot. And billionaires donate to a pro-Republican, pro-gay marriage super PAC that hasn't done anything yet.

September 14, 2012 | Mayor Michael Bloomberg may well have spent last night with a cigar in one hand and a glass of not-a-soft-drink in the other. He could celebrate the New York City Board of Health's approval of his proposal to restrict the sale of sugary soda pop larger than 16 ounces. Dare anyone follow up at the national level? We offer some cold, hard numbers to consider.

September 13, 2012 | OpenSecrets.org unveils its latest tool -- at-a-glance profiles of more than 20,000 organizations that include lobbying, campaign finance and other information on one page to help you easily measure an organization's influence in Washington.

September 12, 2012 | The Chicago teachers' strike puts a hold on Rahm Emanuel's fundraising for Priorities USA. Will teachers' unions -- among the largest donors to liberal outside spending groups -- shut down their giving?

September 10, 2012 | On this day in 1897, London police arrested taxi cab driver George Smith in what has been reported to be the first-ever drunk driving arrest. One hundred and fifteen years later, drunk driving is a major concern in Washington, D.C., where advocacy and industry groups frequently lobby on the issue.

September 6, 2012 | Yesterday, one of Donald Trump's aides bragged to BusinessInsider that his boss has given "millions" of dollars to pro-Romney super PACs. We had to check out this claim from The Donald, who's occasionally shown a self-promotional streak over the years.

September 5, 2012 | After a week of political pageantry and Republican politics in Tampa Bay, the spotlight turns to Democrats this week, as they kick off their own party convention in the battleground state of North Carolina. Readers of this blog know all too well what that means: It's party time.

September 4, 2012 | OpenSecrets Blog delivered a petition with more than 23,000 signatures to the Romney campaign in Tampa asking them to release the full list of their bundlers. Every campaign since 2000 (including Romney's 2008 bid) released the names of bundlers, but so far, this year's Romney campaign hasn't responded -- help us keep up the pressure on the campaign.

August 31, 2012 | Although the Romney campaign refuses to publicly release the list of its donors, a number of these elite fundraisers (those who have raised $1 million or more for the campaign) enjoyed a celebratory gathering on a yacht Tuesday. OpenSecrets Blog was at the marina to witness the comings and goings.

August 28, 2012 | As the campaign season kicks into high gear with the conventions, the focus will increasingly be on presidential bundlers. These elite fundraisers tap their personal and professional networks to "bundle" donations for the major candidates -- and often are rewarded with perks and special treatment, starting with the conventions. Check out what we know about the bundlers for both candidates, and what we still are trying to find out.

August 28, 2012 | Charlie Crist makes convention news, agreeing to speak at the Democratic event next week -- despite being the beneficiary of millions from Republicans during his career, a New Hampshire gubernatorial candidate shows how to run a campaign on the cheap, and convention sponsors are holding back this year.

August 24, 2012 | Romney announces his plans to change the American energy industry -- just as the oil and gas industry injects a huge flood of cash into his campaign, rockers blast Paul Ryan, but don't put their money where their mouth is, and California considers public financing of campaigns.

August 10, 2012 | We've had some fun here at OpenSecrets Blog pitting K Street's top power players against each other in Washington's Influence Olympics. But in all seriousness, politics has always been very much a part of the Olympic Games. The United States Olympic Committee itself is no stranger to Washington, spending millions on lobbying over the years; and several members of its board of directors are active Democratic and Republican donors.

August 9, 2012 | After nearly two weeks of stiff competition among K Street's most powerful forces, the final -- and toughest -- event at Washington's Influence Olympics is upon us: the marathon. Like the actual event at the London Games, participants in the marathon at the Influence Olympics must possess the endurance to sustain a strong lobbying operation over a long period of time. Unlike the real Olympics, however, many of the top sprinters are also among the most competitive marathon runners.

August 8, 2012 | Usain Bolt's success got us thinking -- which company is the top "sprinter" this year in Washington? In other words, which groups have rushed out the door the quickest to spend the most money on lobbying through first half of 2012?

August 3, 2012 | It's gotta be the shoes. We test the D.C. clout of the country's top basketball footwear companies at today's Influence Olympics event, which features a blowout that rivals even Team USA's recent London performances.

August 2, 2012 | To emerge victorious from this event, lobbying firms must prove they can knock out the competition by offering representation on a broad range of issues to an array of industries -- thus packing a heck of a bottom line punch.

August 1, 2012 | President Obama anted up for his own re-election bid, something he didn't do in 2008. If he wins, he may have to deal with even more gridlock on Capitol Hill now that one of the last Republican moderates, Rep. Steve LaTourette, is exiting. And a Washington lobbying firm is the home of a pro-Bahrain group that took GOP Rep. Dan Burton to that country, and the firm has other interesting ties to the Hoosier State.

July 31, 2012 | The U.S. may have taken gold in women's gymnastics today -- but who medaled in the decathlon in Washington's Influence Olympics? The winners, some of whom had very limited resources, lobbied on the greatest number of issues.

July 30, 2012 | Today's event in our ongoing Washington Influence Olympics: The high jump! Which companies have had the biggest jump in their lobbying expenditures from 2008, the year of the last summer Olympics, to 2011?

July 27, 2012 | Millions of people all over the world today will tune in for the event that comes but once every four years: the Opening Ceremony of the Summer Olympics. This year, there are 53 official corporate sponsors of the Olympics, most of which have a multinational reach. And just about any major company that's doing business in the U.S. is likely to a have a stake in what's going on in Washington. Of the 53 Olympic sponsors, 29 have lobbied the federal government since the last Summer Games, even those that are not based in the U.S. Welcome to the Influence Olympics!

July 27, 2012 | LinkedIn comes to Washington, lobbying for the first time. The Campaign for Primary Accountability, though, is packing its bags, at least for this cycle. And a Republican lawmaker's leadership PAC takes folks to Disney World. Can we come next time?

July 19, 2012 | The veepstakes is more art than science. Mindful of the fact that Mitt Romney could choose a running mate who's not prominent on anyone's radar screen, we bring you a list of sometimes-mentioned possibilities.

July 17, 2012 | Mitt Romney's still only releasing the names of his bundlers who are also federally registered lobbyists. But that sliver of information does provide some insight: His biggest lobbyist-bundler is Patrick Durkin, lobbyist for Barclay's Capital -- the giant British bank currently under attack for allegedly rigging international interest rates.

July 16, 2012 | Of all the potential GOP vice presidential candidates who might -- or might not -- be on Mitt Romney's short list, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal might present the biggest contrast with Romney himself.

July 16, 2012 | We hate to sound like we're nagging, but we've been asking Mitt Romney to release his list of bundlers for a long time. It's been so long, in fact, that we've decided to start keeping track of time with a new widget -- a running clock showing how long the Romney campaign has ignored requests that he disclose the names of influential supporters who are out on the fundraising trail on his behalf.

July 6, 2012 | After riding an anti-establishment Tea Party wave into office in 2010, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has gone from being a relatively unknown state representative to a potential vice presidential pick in just two short years. Although some have reported that GOP candidate Mitt Romney is not vetting Rubio, the campaign insists it is considering the 41-year-old Florida native for the VP slot.

July 3, 2012 | Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is moving on from his successful leadership PAC so that the group can create a new super PAC, GlaxoSmithKline agrees to the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history with the Justice Department and FC New York sports pro-Romney apparel.

June 29, 2012 | The BCS finally changes how the best college team is determined, but its Washington playbook seems to be working well enough. The FEC said donating by text message was fine, but technical and other glitches remain. And despite its announcement to the contrary, the firefighters' union has given more than $1 million in PAC money to federal candidates this cycle.

June 25, 2012 | Its recent troubles aside, Ogilvy Government Relations has been a K Street powerhouse for the past five years. One client has stood head and shoulders above the others during that stretch.

June 22, 2012 | But other than the Hollywood bump, the sources of Obama's campaign cash remained fairly static. The president raised nearly $3 million from retired donors in May, a group which has held the top spot for both Obama and Romney for the entire cycle so far.

June 19, 2012 | Howard Rich was behind a slickly produced, anti-Earth Day video this year that's been watched more than 2 million times on YouTube. That's just one product to emerge from his tightly-knit network of tax-exempt groups that pass money back and forth and are active political players. The original donors, though, aren't known. Which is just the way he likes it.

June 12, 2012 | If campaign donations facilitate access to power, a select group of Washington lobbyists will be scheduling many meetings on Capitol Hill after the 2012 elections. These deep-pocketed individuals regularly donate the maximum allowable amount of money to federal candidates (currently $117,000 per 2-year cycle). Today, the Center is releasing a new feature, displaying the top 25 lobbyist contributors to federal candidates, parties and outside spending groups.

June 4, 2012 | Even if it has severed ties from ALEC, Wal-Mart has embraced a very political strategy in Washingotn, D.C., spending millions of dollars each year lobbying Congress and contributing to political campaigns.

May 31, 2012 | Former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer, who from the start of his campaign pledged to refuse contributions larger than $100 and any money from political action committees, officially ended his longshot presidential bid Tuesday. It was an almost inevitable irony that he couldn't get his campaign finance reform message out because he couldn't raise enough money to do so -- but he pledges to keep pushing his cause.

May 29, 2012 | When a giant New York law firm falls, the reverberations can be strong in the nation's capital. The firm Dewey & LeBoeuf filed for bankruptcy Monday, after shutting its Washington lobbying practice two weeks ago. Its clients at the time it closed included several insurance giants, such as Lloyd's of London and Aflac.

May 24, 2012 | While you're baking in the sun this weekend to celebrate the first days of summer, don't forget the sunscreen. Also, remember that while you relax, someone in Washington is probably hard at work devising a lobbying strategy on what the label should say. The "Big Sunscreen" lobby, revealed!

May 15, 2012 | This week the House is debating the reauthorization of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, and there seems to be little danger of a relapse of the relative bipartisanship that occurred at the end of April, when the Senate approved its version of the bill. But who knew that 44 groups would be registered to lobby on the proposed legislation?

May 14, 2012 | Ticket sales for tonight's Ricky Martin-hosted Obama fundraiser in New York sold out in a flash after Obama made his historic announcement about gay marriage. According to OpenSecrets.org data, about one in nine of Obama's top bundlers is gay.

May 9, 2012 | It's planting season, which brings to mind one of the most ubiquitous names in agribusiness: Monsanto. Love it or hate it -- and there are plenty of people on either side -- the company's formidable Washington presence makes it a tough competitor.

May 3, 2012 | The nation's capital actually has quite a bit of say in what has become the extremely lucrative business of professional football. And in turn, the NFL has quite the presence in Washington.

April 27, 2012 | The Center for Responsive Politics has released a list of the top 26 colleges which have produced the most revolving door lobbyists. Check out which schools have the most graduates passing through the revolving doors between the federal government and lobbying firms.

April 20, 2012 | Despite weak fundraising by the super PAC supporting President Obama, his own fundraising continues full-steam with the help of an army of bundlers -- now up to 534. Together they've raised at least $106.4 million.

April 20, 2012 | SOPA is still warm in the grave, but here comes CISPA, a bill that would mean corporations could turn over info about their users to law enforcement without a court order. Privacy advocates are outraged and trying to stir up support before next week's House vote. Companies lobbying on the bill have given lots of money to its original sponsor, Republican Rep. Mike Rogers.

April 12, 2012 | Congress may stir up a hornet's nest in the next few weeks when it takes up the matter of overhauling the postal service. The issue has brought out an array of special interests, including lobbyists for the envelope industry.

April 5, 2012 | Two years ago today, the Upper Big Branch mine exploded, killing 29 miners and injuring two others. In the months after, it became clear that the mine's owner, Massey Energy, had flouted safety regulations and tried to game the system. Now its CEO is gone and the company's been sold -- but the coal industry is only spending more on politicians and lobbyists.

April 4, 2012 | Yahoo recently sued Facebook over allegations of patent infringement. In this edition of Capital Rivals, we're pitting internet companies Yahoo and Facebook against each other to see who wins the money-in-politics game. It's a closer match-up than you might expect.

March 29, 2012 | The story of a JetBlue pilot who may have had a mental breakdown on a flight to Las Vegas earlier this week ended without physical harm when fellow crew members and passengers stepped in, but it highlighted questions about air safety: How closely are pilots monitored? Who decides when it's safe for them to fly?
And how much do the airlines spend lobbying on issues like this?

March 13, 2012 | Only the most ardent fan of the University of Colorado at Boulder would pick the 11th-seeded Buffaloes to win the NCAA men's basketball tourney, even though they have one of the nation's best rebounders in Andre Roberson.

February 29, 2012 | January proved to be a financially fruitful month for presidential candidate Rick Santorum, bringing a spike in contributions from individuals in several important industries. See what sectors and industries were the most important to Santorum's campaign.

February 15, 2012 | Our updated infographic reflects the latest bundler information disclosed by the presidential candidates: On the Democratic side, 444 bundlers have been collecting money for the re-election committee of President Obama and the Democratic National Committee, up from 357 at the end of September. On the Republican side...well, we really don't know.

January 31, 2012 | Sixteen lobbyists raised nearly $2.2 million to aid the presidential campaign of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2011, according to a Center for Responsive Politics review of documents filed with the Federal Election Commission.

January 31, 2012 | Last year, 445 bundlers collectively raised at least $74.4 million for Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee. That represents $35 out of every $100 the two organizations have raised since April, when Obama launched his re-election bid.

January 27, 2012 | President Barack Obama's re-election campaign is refunding the donations of five registered federal lobbyists who gave to the committee last year, OpenSecrets Blog has learned. Some of these refunds were triggered after OpenSecrets Blog brought the contributions to the campaign's attention. The Obama campaign has pledged to refuse contributions from lobbyists, continuing a policy it set during the 2008 campaign.

January 26, 2012 | SOPA and PIPA appear to have been very, very good for K Street.
Companies that lobbied on the two bills spent at least $104.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, more than double the $49.3 million they laid out in the previous quarter, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics.

January 26, 2012 | The nation's economy may be slowly rebounding, but during 2011, the economic engine of K Street sputtered. Overall expenditures on lobbying were down for the first time in more than a decade, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics.

January 25, 2012 | No candidate on the Republican side of the aisle has yet to join President Barack Obama in voluntarily disclosing information about all of their bundlers, people who often receive special treatment for the large amounts of money they are able to raise. Learn more about what we know -- and don't know -- about the 2012 presidential campaign bundlers in this new infographic.

December 30, 2011 | The ten universities selected to play in this year's Bowl Championship Series were chosen for their toughness and tenacity. They got the nod because any given Saturday their football teams displayed a willingness to win, and often did so. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that these schools are employing similar tactics in Washington, D.C.

December 19, 2011 | Finding the price of the bounty in the "12 Days of Christmas" carol a little steep? Well, no wonder. Do you have any idea how much the groups representing each of those presents spend lobbying the federal government each year?

December 16, 2011 | Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor and writer, stepped into the campaign finance realm only recently, and only, as he sees it, out of necessity. OpenSecrets Blog spoke with Lessig about his new book, "Republic, Lost," and what it describes as the "one issue in this country" that ties together all the others: campaign finance reform.

December 14, 2011 | It's the steal of the century. For the price of buying a condo in Washington, D.C., you can support the political campaigns of members of Congress who support your trillion-dollar program. Talk about return on investment!

December 12, 2011 | Nothing is known about the donors to Crossroads GPS -- a conservative group that, along with its affiliated super PAC, American Crossroads -- plans to spend $240 million during the 2012 election cycle. But the finance, insurance and real estate sector accounts for $1 out of every $9 that American Crossroads has raised. Yet Crossroads GPS recently slammed Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren for allegedly being too close to Big Finance.

December 9, 2011 | Welcome to the latest installment of OpenSecrets.org Mailbag, where we answer your burning questions about the role of money in politics, political influence and the work we do here at OpenSecrets.org.

December 7, 2011 | The White House press shop will soon have a new addition: Jennifer Palmieri, who will be the deputy communications director. Despite her status as a former lobbyist, Palmieri is likely to find a welcome home working for a president who once vowed that lobbyists would not "find a job in my White House."

November 30, 2011 | A complaint to the FEC against Rep. Rob Andrews (D-N.J.) alleges that the eleven-term congressman illegally used tens of thousands of dollars contributed to his campaign to pay for a luxurious trip to Scotland to attend a donor's wedding, a graduation party for one of his daughters and to support his other daughter's acting and singing career.

November 29, 2011 | Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) announced earlier today that he would not seek re-election. Frank, who is in his 16th term in the U.S. House of Representatives, is the highest ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. In recent years especially, he's been a prolific fund-raiser, often raising huge sums from the industries that the Financial Services Committee regulates.

November 28, 2011 | Is the lure of the private sector too much for Rep. Charlie Gonzalez (D-Texas)? Over the weekend, Gonzalez, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and a seven-term congressman, announced that he would not seek re-election at the end of his term next year.

November 21, 2011 | The number of religious organizations playing the influence game in Washington has swelled since 1970, according to a new study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. In 1970, less than 40 groups were involved with lobbying or advocacy efforts. Now, that number has risen to more than 200.

November 18, 2011 | The Gibson Guitar Corp. is fighting to amend the Lacey Act, a law signed by President William McKinley in 1900 that prohibits trade in wildlife, fish and plants that have been illegally taken, transported or sold.

November 15, 2011 | The twelve members of Congress on the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction -- better known as the debt supercommittee -- have just seven days left to provide Congress with recommendations to cut more than $1.2 trillion from the federal deficit, if they are to meet their November 23rd deadline. And the more time that passes, the slimmer the odds for the public to see those recommendations before they go to a vote in Congress, scheduled for that same day.

November 11, 2011 | More companies, unions and other groups could lobby the Department of Veterans Affairs this year than ever before, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics. Through the end of September, 254 organizations reported lobbying the VA.

November 10, 2011 | Southeastern Michigan was the setting for the latest GOP presidential debate Wednesday night. The state's significance as the symbolic center of the American auto industry and as an epicenter of a sluggish economic recovery were lost on no one, as the candidates debated bailouts to American car manufacturers and the economy at length.

November 8, 2011 | The bill sponsored by Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-Minn.) to repeal the tax on medical devices is gaining momentum and now has 218 co-sponsors, the minimum number of votes needed for it to pass, according to a Medical Technology caucus press release. The progress of the Protect Medical Innovation Act is partly a result of extensive lobbying efforts and political contributions of medical groups in favor of the bill.

November 2, 2011 | Lobbying expenditures fell during the third quarter of 2011 for many of the country's most prominent companies, especially those in the energy and natural resource sector, according to a preliminary analysis of about 90 percent of all third-quarter lobbying reports by the Center for Responsive Politics.

November 1, 2011 | On Monday, the White House announced support for two bills currently weaving their way through Congress related to access to prescription drugs, and President Barack Obama isn't the only one with his eye on this legislation.

October 31, 2011 | During the third quarter of 2011, more than 10,000 individual lobbyists actively worked to advance the interests of their clients and monitored political developments in the nation's capital. That's roughly 20 lobbyists for every member of Congress.

October 28, 2011 | Ron Conway, the man behind the YouTube hit "Ed Lee is 2 Legit 2 Quit" has actually given more money to Republican candidates and groups -- about 70 percent of the $246,000 he's donated at the federal level over the years.

October 25, 2011 | Though President Barack Obama may no longer be Wall Street's preferred candidate, Obama continues to win the support of several smaller sectors and interest groups, including lawyers, health professionals, the technology industry and Hollywood.

October 22, 2011 | Though the locales and agendas of the Occupy movement have widened, its origins in the financial district of New York City suggest a central theme: the undue influence of Wall Street corporations.

October 20, 2011 | Nearly lost in the troves of campaign finance data recently released by presidential candidates was an updated list of bundlers for President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign. These 359 well-connected supporters have raised at least $56 million for Obama and the Democratic National Committee so far this year, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics.

October 12, 2011 | Despite the lockout, the NBA's spending in Washington has remained to be a budget item. During the first half of 2011, the NBA spent $40,000 on federal lobbying, focused on "federal issues affecting professional sports leagues" and "cable television and copyright regulations," as well as seeking to "protect collectively bargained drug testing agreements."

October 10, 2011 | What current high-level member of the Obama administration became a lobbyist one year after he was chief of staff to President Clinton? And how many clients have lobbied his current employer so far in 2011?

October 7, 2011 | Sarah Palin, the former GOP governor of Alaska and 2008 vice presidential nominee, told radio host Mark Levin Wednesday that she was content to influence the political scene as a non-candidate, "unshackled" and "able to say what I want to say."

September 30, 2011 | As the third quarter draws to a close and candidates race to fill their campaign war chests, most presidential candidates remain mum on the topic of bundlers -- the well-connected fund-raisers who help bring in the big bucks and are often rewarded for their service.

September 28, 2011 | In its trek from the tar sands of Alberta to the white sands of the Gulf Coast, the Keystone XL oil pipeline project would traverse 1,700 miles. The oil's long voyage across the American heartland through a pipeline about the size of a semi-trailer truck tire is not unlike the journey the project has traveled the past three years through the bureaucratic pipeline in Washington.

September 28, 2011 | During the 2008 election cycle, President Barack Obama enjoyed high approval ratings in electorally influential states such as New York and California -- states whose residents also significantly contributed to his campaign. However, as the 2012 presidential campaign enters the third quarter, Obama's approval ratings in these states have gone done. This could negatively affect his fund-raising.

September 27, 2011 | Facebook announced on Monday the creation of a corporate political action committee, called FB PAC, The Hill reports. The move comes just a week after it announced a major revamp to its platform.

September 23, 2011 | During a web seminar sponsored by the Business Ethics Network last week, campaign finance reform advocates were in agreement in offering a forecast of big money in the 2012 election cycle -- and called on supporters to brace for a long fight.

September 23, 2011 | Moody's evaluation was meant to be apolitical. But Moody's itself doesn't stay above the fray. Last year, the company spent $1.5 million on federal lobbying, and during the first half of this year, it spent $610,000.

September 22, 2011 | A bipartisan group of congressional representatives has introduced legislation to require the 12 members of the debt super committee to immediately enact transparency measures that would bring its work in full view of the public. And it can't come soon enough.

September 19, 2011 | Actor Alec Baldwin made headlines over the weekend for a joke involving the News Corp. phone-hacking scandal, which was cut by network officials before it made it to the airwaves during the Emmys. Baldwin's political contributions indicate he leans Democratic, unlike Fox and News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch.

September 16, 2011 | The "Cola Wars" aren't raging quite as hard as they were during the 1980s and 1990s, but chances are you know at least a few people who are such die-hard Coke or Pepsi fans they wouldn't even dream of drinking the other.

September 14, 2011 | A report released last week by the Center for Lobbying in the Public Interest, which uses data from the Center for Responsive Politics, argues that to President Barack Obama's attempts to reduce the influence of lobbyists in Washington have instead led to decreased transparency and harmed the public interest.

September 13, 2011 | This morning, the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on crime, terrorism and homeland security will hold a hearing on H.R. 822, the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011, legislation that has been targeted by both gun control groups and organizations supportive of gun rights.

September 12, 2011 | Twenty-three corporations -- including AT&T, Exxon Mobil, Kraft, Coca-Cola and Koch Industries -- compose the ALEC's "private enterprise board." On the national level, these companies have been mustering a juggernaut of lobbyists to target congressional initiatives and donating extensively to a number of candidates.

September 10, 2011 | Welcome to the latest installment of OpenSecrets.org Mailbag, where we answer your burning questions about the role of money in politics, political influence and the work we do here at OpenSecrets.org.

September 9, 2011 | President Barack Obama recently instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to overturn written ozone regulations. According to The Hill, the president's decision came after his chief of staff, Bill Daley, met with representatives from business trade associations and environmental groups.

September 6, 2011 | Top Democratic and Republican leaders of the so-called debt supercommittee announced Friday that inaugural hearings scheduled for next week will be open to the press and the public.

September 6, 2011 | September is National Wilderness Month, and while the Lorax may not be a registered lobbyist in Washington, D.C., several other groups are working to protect the environment and promote wilderness through lobbying and advocacy.

August 31, 2011 | The co-chairs of the 12-member supercommittee charged with chopping $1.5 trillion from the nation's debt have chosen Mark Prater, the chief tax lawyer for the Senate Finance Committee, as the new group's staff director.

August 30, 2011 | Decades after former NAACP counsel Thurgood Marshall joined the U.S. Supreme Court, the NAACP is still fighting to eliminate racial prejudices and to secure political, educational, social, and economic equality of all citizens. And part of that fight involves lobbying in the nation's halls of power.

August 26, 2011 | Welcome to the latest installment of OpenSecrets.org Mailbag, where we answer your burning questions about the role of money in politics, political influence and the work we do here at OpenSecrets.org.

August 25, 2011 | Three dozen members of Congress held stock in Apple in 2009, the most recent year for which data is available. That makes it one of the most popular assets among all congressional investors.

August 22, 2011 | Earlier this year, Republicans in both the House and Senate introduced resolutions urging approval of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement. At since then, hundreds of companies, unions and trade associations have set their sites on the proposal.

August 18, 2011 | Last week comedian Stephen Colbert's new super PAC made its first move -- advertisements that satirically voiced support for Republican presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry of Texas. For at least one person, the ad worked. Salvatore Purpura, who had been serving as the treasurer of Colbert's super PAC.

August 12, 2011 | Some members of Congress have rallied to defend defense spending with automatic cuts built into the Debt Ceiling Act if the so-called "super committee" should fail and the potential for major cuts in defense spending by the super committee itself.

August 10, 2011 | One-fifth of the 377 joint fund-raising committees active during the 2010 election cycle received at least half of their donations from one sector. Less than one percent of candidate committees, on the other hand, typically received 50 percent or more of their donations from one sector during the same time period.

August 8, 2011 | President Barack Obama announced Thursday that Steven VanRoekel will be promoted to be the executive branch's chief information officer. VanRoekel comes to the post from Microsoft, by way of the Federal Communications Commission. VanRoekel and his wife Caroline, however, are no strangers to the political process.

August 5, 2011 | Republican presidential hopefuls' underwhelming second-quarter fund-raising totals can be attributed, in part, to a large network of elite GOP fund-raisers that remains untapped, the New York Times reported.

July 29, 2011 | At least 27 percent of the $582,100 Santorum raised through June 30 has come from residents of the Keystone State, according to a preliminary analysis of campaign finance filings by the Center for Responsive Politics.

July 28, 2011 | Fairsearch.org will not be giving Google a +1. To combat what they see as "the Google problem," Fairsearch.org hired lobbyists for the first time and spent 80,000 lobbying during the second quarter on behalf of "competition in the search market," according to a review of lobbying disclosure reports by the Center for Responsive Politics.

July 27, 2011 | James E. Hyland, currently a lobbyist with the Pennsylvania Avenue Group, bundled $17,610 for the presidential campaign of former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Hyland is a registered lobbyist dealing mainly with the financial sector.

July 22, 2011 | One-third of the money President Barack Obama's elite fund-raising corps has raised on behalf of his re-election has come from the financial sector, according to a new Center for Responsive Politics analysis. Individuals who work in the finance, insurance and real estate sector are responsible for raising at least $11.3 million for Obama's campaign and the Democratic National Committee, according to the Center's research.

July 21, 2011 | Seven of the biggest and most high-profile banks and investment companies -- Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and the American Bankers Association -- have spent a combined $20 million on lobbying the federal government so far this year, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics.

July 21, 2011 | Republican Buddy Roemer filed an exploratory committee with the Federal Election Commission in early March. He has pledged not accept money from political action committees or any donation more than $100. Roemer is the only presidential candidate to self-impose the $100 donation cap.

July 20, 2011 | Given the on-going debt-ceiling battle and fights over what deserves government funding, tackling the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind seems like less and less of a reality. However, that's not stopping lobbyists from pushing for what they believe in when it comes to childhood education.

July 20, 2011 | Tibet has had a longstanding effort in Washington to lobby the U.S. government for support in the form of the International Campaign for Tibet. The group, which spent $160,000 on lobbying in 2009 and $145,000 in 2010, advocates for assistance to Tibet on a number of different issues.

July 18, 2011 | Between the 1990 election cycle and the 2010 election cycle, former Ohio AG Richard Cordray donated $71,080 to Democratic candidates and organizations, research from the Center for Responsive Politics indicates. His wife, Margaret, donated an additional $16,500 -- also all to Democrats.

July 15, 2011 | Today, President Barack Obama's re-election campaign released the names of 244 bundlers, which the campaign dubbed "volunteer fund-raisers," who collected at least $50,000 each on behalf of the president's re-election.

July 15, 2011 | Today the general public will get a detailed look at who is winning the money race -- and who exactly is bankrolling each of the candidates -- when campaigns file their official reports with the Federal Elections Commission. But one piece of crucial information will be missing from almost all the candidates' filings -- the names of their campaign bundlers.

July 14, 2011 | Behind the scenes, researchers here at the Center have implemented several changes in how campaign contributions get coded and classified into one of more than 100 different industries and special interest areas -- changes that affect not only the 2010 election cycle, but all data going back to our earliest data in the 1990 election cycle.

July 14, 2011 | Political science professor James A. Thurber, the founder and director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, talks with OpenSecrets Blog about President Barack Obama's time in the White House, Obama's fund-raising machine, federal lobbying regulations and the proliferation of outside spending.

July 13, 2011 | When it comes to the government lobbying efforts of most religious institutions, their activities are notably shrouded in darkness, even as representatives of numerous faiths routinely pressure federal lawmakers on issues ranging from health care to international relations, poverty to abortion rights.

July 13, 2011 | Wedding season is in full swing. As many soon-to-be-married people spend hundreds of dollars preparing for their weddings, major wedding vendors also spend a healthy amount of money attempting to influence government policy.

July 12, 2011 | Congress, one of America's longest-standing institutions, employs thousands of people. Many of them are former campaign staffers for senators and representatives. Others are policy experts with years of experience. And hundreds are former lobbyists who used to lobby the very institution for which they now work.

July 6, 2011 | Today, congressional representatives are typically more wary about publicly supporting of Castro, and an active anti-Castro lobby has been financially generous to opponents of the Cuban communist leader. During the 2010 cycle, anti-Castro political action committees donated more than $3 million to congressional campaigns across the country, with a roughly two-to-one ratio of contributions to Democrats over Republicans.

June 30, 2011 | Facing potentially stifling federal regulations that threaten to short-circuit their profits, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile have each dumped millions of dollars into campaign contributions and federal lobbying expenditures, hoping that a barrage of political influence will subdue any unwanted restrictions.

June 22, 2011 | A notable group of federal lobbyists -- 22 individuals to be exact -- made personal contributions to national party committees on both sides of the isle, according to an analysis of 2010 campaign donation records by the Center for Responsive Politics.
But a notable few -- 22 individuals to be exact -- made personal contributions to national party committees on both sides of the isle, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

June 9, 2011 | Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) had a number of setbacks Wednesday as top Democrats called on him to resign, others returned his donations and a fund-raiser was postponed after he admitted he sent sexual photos to women over the internet.

June 7, 2011 | Last week, shareholders of Home Depot gathered in Atlanta, where one of the orders of business was a resolution pushed by Boston-based NorthStar Asset Management for the company to provide detailed information about their political spending each year.

June 6, 2011 | Although it may seem trivial, pro-Israel groups have donated heavily to embattled Rep. Anthony Weiner's campaign during past election cycles, The Center for Responsive Politics' research indicates.

June 3, 2011 | The Democratic National Committee will reimburse at least 10 registered federal lobbyists who donated to the committee -- a violation of the organization's stated policies -- after OpenSecrets Blog brought the donations to the DNC's attention this afternoon.

June 1, 2011 | As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was running for re-election, about $1 out of every $20 he raised for his massive war chest came from a tiny but elite group of Washington insiders: federally registered lobbyists and their immediate family members, according to a new analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics of campaign finance data and lobbying reports.

June 1, 2011 | It's been more than 10 months since President Barack Obama signed massive financial regulatory reform legislation into law, but the special interests it directly affects are sustaining a federal lobbying onslaught now aimed at shaping the law's implementation.

May 20, 2011 | Money continues to flow into the special election in New York's 26th Congressional District in the western part of the state. With the district's Election Day just four days away, political groups are making their last media buys to influence voters, sending out last-minute mailings and ramping up get-out-the-vote operations.

May 4, 2011 | In an effort to illustrate these connections, the Center for Responsive Politics today adds a small but powerful feature to the campaign money donor sections within the OpenSecrets.org money-in-politics profiles for every member of Congress.

May 4, 2011 | What do you do when you're a foreign government facing heat from U.S. lawmakers about whether you were officially hiding, aiding or abetting Osama bin Laden? Turn to federal lobbyists for assistance, of course.

May 3, 2011 | Several of the year's hottest political topics have witnessed the greatest increase in lobbyists' attention during the first months of the 112th Congress, according to a preliminary analysis of lobbying reports by the Center for Responsive Politics.

May 2, 2011 | In all, 43 different companies, organizations and special interest groups last year employed at least three former congressmen as registered federal lobbyists, a Center for Responsive Politics analysis indicates.

April 29, 2011 | Unlike political committees or candidates for federal office, the Democratic Governors Association and Republican Governors Association both may receive unlimited amounts of money in their bids to support gubernatorial candidates across the nation. And raise cash they did.

April 28, 2011 | President Barack Obama returned Wednesday night to a land where campaign cash has flowed for him like milk and honey: New York City. Of every $20 Obama raised when he ran for president in 2008, $1 came from someone in New York City. And as he battles for re-election, Obama is hoping to keep his New York City supporters motivated to again open their pocketbooks for him.

April 19, 2011 | After a year of largely self-imposed campaign finance exile, embattled oil company BP is again making federal political contributions from the political action committee sponsored by its North American subsidy, a Center for Responsive Politics review of federal records indicates.

April 15, 2011 | The House Financial Services Committee is a furnace in which legislation affecting Wall Street is forged. It's also a hotbed of money from individuals and political committee committees connected to the financial sector.

April 14, 2011 | Many of the 87 House GOP freshmen who ran as Washington outsiders are now turning to K Street lobbyists and other special interest groups to help pay off their sizable campaign debts and prepare for their re-election campaigns.

April 13, 2011 | It's no secret that corporations and special interest groups that dominate lobbying in the nation's capital routinely shower campaign cash on congressional committees directly affecting affect their business interests. But a study by the Center for Responsive Politics and The Fiscal Times found that special interests routinely target members of Congress who can do them the most good.

April 13, 2011 | Five House Republican freshmen who received substantial campaign contribution from the financial industry after the Nov. 2 election are taking the lead in trying to repeal or replace parts of the sweeping Dodd-Frank financial services reform law.

April 8, 2011 | While President Barack Obama has not changed the way Washington works, political science professor James Thurber said Obama has instead adapted, preserved in trying circumstances and seen tremendous legislative successes.

April 5, 2011 | Public opinion on lobbyists may not be favorable, but most of the time, they're playing by the rules. That's among the findings in the Government Accountability Office's latest report on lobbying disclosure requirements.

April 4, 2011 | During the 2008 election, Barack Obama set fund-raising records and mobilized millions of individual donors. Obama was particularly successful in turning small-dollar donors into repeat givers, often via the Internet. His re-election campaign will be trying to emulate that success this go around.

April 1, 2011 | Welcome to the latest installment of OpenSecrets.org Mailbag, where we answer your burning questions about the role of money in politics, political influence and the work we do here at OpenSecrets.org.

March 31, 2011 | Freedom fighters, pornographers and self-proclaimed evil rich men are among the cast of characters appearing in federal campaign finance documents stretching back more than two decades, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

March 23, 2011 | With all the news coming in from Japan, Libya and other countries in the Middle East, news coverage over the budget debate seems to have been sidelined somewhat. Nonetheless, legislators on Capitol Hill are still working to come to some sort of compromise..

March 22, 2011 | Republican Tim Pawlenty, who yesterday launched a presidential exploratory committee, built a massive war chest during the 2010 election cycle to aid fellow Republicans. Who was fueling this money machine?

March 16, 2011 | Dozens of senior congressional committee staff members are former federally registered lobbyists, having represented various special interests that frequently clash with Congress, an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics and Remapping Debate indicates.

March 14, 2011 | If a political fight over nuclear power materializes, advocates of nuclear energy in the United States are primed for it, a Center for Responsive Politics analysis of federal lobbying and campaign finance data indicates.

March 11, 2011 | Despite dismal electoral results for Democrats nationally in 2010, fund-raising powerhouse ActBlue had its most prolific period on record. The political committee, which serves as an online conduit of contributions for Democrats, funneled approximately $60 million to federal candidates and committees during the 2010 election cycle.

March 10, 2011 | One out of every four groups that lobbied on any issue at the federal level during 2009 or 2010 targeted their efforts on health care reform, financial regulatory reform, the stimulus and cap-and-trade climate proposals, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics.

March 1, 2011 | Former Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) may not be legally allowed to lobby his colleagues on the Hill until 2013, but that hasn't stopped him from taking the job of Hollywood's top lobbyist.

February 24, 2011 | The federal government's selection of Boeing to build the next generation of Air Force aerial refueling tankers comes after years of contentious fighting that's resulted in sky-high lobbying spending and accelerated campaign contributions to key politicians.

February 18, 2011 | Health services and abortion provider Planned Parenthood today landed on the government's budgetary chopping block. But Planned Parenthood, more so than any other abortion rights organization, is positioned to fight back.

February 17, 2011 | For Google and Facebook, the president serving as their pitchman is indicative of their meteoric rise both outside and within Washington, D.C. And it marks how the political landscape has rapidly shifted for computer and Internet companies, with Washington nonentities of just a few years ago now ranking among the most prominent players in the capital.

February 14, 2011 | Several Republican freshmen have also drawn from Washington, D.C.'s lobbying community to fill out their staffs. For this week's PolitiQuizz, we're asking you take a look at the hiring patterns of three of these freshmen.

February 10, 2011 | Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, this week released nearly 2,000 pages of documents from more than 100 companies and trade associations outlining federal regulations they'd like to axe. Most of these groups have also invested significant sums in lobbying and donations to lawmakers to make their political points, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

February 4, 2011 | The nation's financial malaise is finally catching up to K Street, where federal lobbying activity plateaued for the first time in a decade, the Center for Responsive Politics' research indicates. After a record $3.49 billion in lobbying spending in 2009, lobbying expenditures in 2010 by corporations, unions, trade associations, universities and other organizations will, at most, eclipse that amount by the narrowest of margins.

January 21, 2011 | Overall, outside spending during the 2010 midterms was more than four times the amount recorded during the 2006 midterm election, the Center for Responsive Politics' research indicates

January 18, 2011 | The Center for Responsive Politics and Remapping Debate have today released the first listings in an interactive tracking tool that allows the public to explore where outgoing senators and representatives from the 111th Congress are now employed.

January 13, 2011 | Imagine asking a friend before the 2010 midterm elections, "What Senate candidates align with your beliefs?" and the response being "All of them." This is the case for many corporate political action committees

January 12, 2011 | Last week, a task force conducted by the Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice of the American Bar Association completed its recommendations for the enhancing federal lobbying disclosure rules...

January 11, 2011 | In the debate about 2nd Amendment rights and gun control, one side -- gun supporters -- typically has the upper hand. Now, gun control advocates are hoping momentum will build for new laws after the assassination attempt against Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) on Saturday in Tucson.

January 6, 2011 | President Barack Obama joked today that his new chief of staff, William Daley, has a "smidgen of awareness of how our system of government and politics works" and praised Daley, saying, "few Americans can boast the breadth of experience that Bill brings to this job." Obama is right: few Americans have Daley's political and corporate clout. And you can find details of Daley's past and present in OpenSecrets.org's revolving door database.

January 5, 2011 | In all, 13 corporations, unions or special interest groups that lobby the federal government purchased at least one full-page advertisement in today's print editions of Roll Call, The Hill or Politico, an OpenSecrets Blog review of the newspapers indicates.

January 5, 2011 | One company embroiled by the foreclosure crisis is not unprepared for a fight. In Washington, D.C., Merscorp Inc. has retained several well-heeled lobbyists and invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying efforts since the start of the mortgage crisis and economic meltdown.

January 3, 2011 | I was first elected to Congress in 1986 and haven't lost a re-election bid since. Previously, I worked in the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. Over my congressional career, I've filled my campaign coffers with more than $10.5 million. During the 2010 election cycle, I was also the No. 1 beneficiary among House members of the waste management industry. Who am I?

January 3, 2011 | In habitually partisan Washington, D.C., a bipartisan group of senators last week helped extend contentious federal tax provisions designed to aid domestic ethanol production. The senators mostly shared common ground on two fronts: geography and contributions from the political action committees of ethanol producers, high-profile ethanol promoters and the leading industry groups for corn, a Center for Responsive Politics analysis indicates.

December 22, 2010 | All told, $185,908 can buy you twelve days of access to everything from drummers to pear trees. And while giving your true love every item in the "12 Days of Christmas" song may cost a pretty penny, keep them on retainer every day of the year costs even more. The cost of the 12 firms and organizations advocating for these gifts so far this year has been $12.4 million, by the Center's calculations.

December 11, 2010 | During his epic filibuster -- or political cult classic-in-the-making "Berniebuster," as it's come to be called -- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), spent about eight minutes on the U.S. Senate floor citing the Center for Responsive Politics' research and reporting on federal lobbying.

December 10, 2010 | Self-proclaimed Florida "billionaire" and all-around character Josue Larose is the founder of 39 political parties in his home state, including the American Music Stars Political Party...

December 9, 2010 | While headlines touted Space Exploration Technologies' unmanned space journey as a giant leap away from large governments dominating the heavens -- only the governments of the United States, China, Russia, Japan, India and the European Union previously accomplished such a feat -- the company is hardly shielding itself from politics.

December 8, 2010 | While being targeted by the government for consumer and corporate power abuses, Bank of America has spent millions of dollars attempting to woo state and federal officials through professional lobbying efforts and campaign contributions, an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics finds. The company even has two corporate political action committees that target the levels of government differently.

December 8, 2010 | President Barack Obama isn't the only big political player coming under increased criticism by his constituents this week. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is also taking heat from its own membership.

December 6, 2010 | Michelle Rhee, the former District of Columbia Public Schools chancellor and education reformer to the stars, was a registered federal lobbyist for an organization called Fighting Apartheid Confrontation Transformation Systems. At least, that's according to federal lobbying disclosure documents that are almost certainly incorrect.

December 3, 2010 | From January through September, 29 unique groups have lobbied on the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban on openly gay service members, according to a Center for Responsive Politics review of federal lobbying reports explicitly mentioning the measure.

December 2, 2010 | Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and John Boehner (R-Ohio) lawmakers have been in Congress for at least two decades, and have plenty influence to show for it. Political watchers are prepared for the rivals -- their positions switched -- to resume their sparring in January. OpenSecrets Blog, meanwhile, details who may have the key political advantages as the curtain opens on the 112th Congress.

November 24, 2010 | Turkey-oriented groups have spent nearly $200,000 on federal lobbying so far this year. And the big birds aren't the only part of your Thanksgiving meal to have representation in Washington.

November 22, 2010 | The Blue Dogs have elevated Reps. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.), John Barrow (D-Ga.) and Mike Ross (D-Ark.) as their new leaders. Which donors and special interests have these men relied upon to fill their war chests?

November 19, 2010 | MSNBC's newest suspension victim is former Congressman Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.), the current co-host of the network's "Morning Joe" program. Scarborough's recent political contributions build upon a history of giving to Republican candidates.

November 17, 2010 | The lobbying contracts of the major distributors of the full-body scanners show a network of lobbyists deeply connected in Washington. For instance, L-3 Communications hired former Sen. Alfonse D'Amato (R-N.Y.) who was once on the Commission on Aviation Security under President George H.W. Bush.

November 16, 2010 | In a rare trial, a special House ethics committee panel today convicted Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), the once powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, on 11 counts of violating House ethics policies.

November 11, 2010 | While you we worrying about Aqua Buddha, and whether you were about to vote for a candidate who was a witch or wasn't, financial services companies and their hired Washington guns blitzed the federal regulatory agencies charged with crafting and implementing new tough rules for Wall Street.

November 10, 2010 | Imagine that every member of Congress represents the industry or special interests that have contributed the most to his or her campaign coffers. Which industries and special interests, then, lost or won seats in Congress during the 2010 midterm election?

November 4, 2010 | Republicans' 60-seat surge during Tuesday's midterm election included replacing the seats of three longtime committee chairmen with almost a century of experience in Congress between them.

October 30, 2010 | While 2010 lobbying expenditures have dropped for some big names in energy -- such as BP, Halliburton, Koch Industries and ExxonMobil -- a handful of oil and gas heavyweights are still flexing the industry's muscle and stepping up their spending, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis of third-quarter federal lobbying reports, which were filed last week with the Clerk of the House and Secretary of the Senate.

October 28, 2010 | According to a recent report by the Wesleyan Media Project, in 2010, "pro-Democratic ads focused on the personal characteristics of Republican candidates in 21 percent of their attack ads

October 27, 2010 | The Illinois-based company that manufactured the dispersants used by BP after the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico spent exponentially more on federal lobbying in the disaster's wake than it has historically.

October 25, 2010 | Various conservative straw polls from this year have put Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich on top as voter favorites. Although primaries don't begin for another 16 months, potential candidates are already laying groundwork for possible presidential runs.
In the meantime, OpenSecrets Blog explores the financial activities during the 2009-2010 election cycle of the politicos who are angling to challenge President Barack Obama in the next presidential election.

October 8, 2010 | The campaign season is coming to the home stretch. With 25 days until voting day, one can bet political groups will throw all the cash they have running advertisements to help their favorite candidates

October 7, 2010 | Thirteen Tea Party-backed Republicans want the U.S. Senate to experience a new brand of political brew after November 2. The question isn't whether they will or won't, but rather, how many of them will be in office? And donations from people making modest campaign contributions appear poised to play an integral role in propelling them into office.

October 7, 2010 | Rep. John Boehner (R-Oh.) has reportedly been working behind the scenes with male Republicans, urging them to avoid appearances of impropriety by cutting down on after-hours partying -- and particularly any partying that involves female lobbyists. And it seems to be working: According to The Hill, female lobbyists are complaining that Boehner's warning has cut off their access to many male Republicans in the House.

October 4, 2010 | Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Linda McMahon, who has repeatedly challenged the truthfulness of her Democratic opponent, Richard Blumenthal, has had her own problems with splitting hairs.

October 4, 2010 | Dollars spent on lobbying are set to increase over all other years if spending remains on its current course. And in context of 2010 congressional campaigns, the top lobbyist-funded House and Senate candidates have received more than $9 million to fuel their campaigns.

October 1, 2010 | Forget Christmas, candidates know this is the season for giving. With just a month until the midterm elections, campaign cash collecting has shifted into high gear. Politico reported that members or candidates for the House and Senate will be having 400 fundraisers in a mere 14 days.

September 29, 2010 | In a congressional election cycle marked by continued economic strife and high unemployment, out-of-state campaign contributions are padding war chests for both incumbents and challengers across the country, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis of campaign finance filings.

September 23, 2010 | Using data from the Center for Responsive Politics, LegiStorm.com and Lobbyists.info, researchers from the Center for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics analyzed the employment histories and salaries of 1,100 politically connected federal lobbyists. Their study concluded that these lobbyists experienced a sizable drop in earnings when their old bosses left Congress.

September 21, 2010 | This week's PolitiQuizz will ask you to do a little investigating into major lobbying interests. Lobbyists, who work to gain influence with officials in areas desired by clients, are part of a system that is designed so that even a minority can gain a leg up on big interests. However, big money often finds itself on top anyway.

September 16, 2010 | The first lady's chief of staff. A top government official in charge of fair housing. A senior staffer at the Education Department. These three people share a common distinction: Not only did they each work as registered lobbyists prior to joining the Obama administration last year, but they were never officially deregistered as lobbyists before taking on their new jobs, a Center for Responsive Politics review of lobbying disclosure reports filed with the House and Senate indicates.

September 10, 2010 | Energy giant PG&E, which operates a natural gas pipeline that Thursday night ignited a massive inferno in San Bruno, Calif., is one of the nation's most notable political players, routinely spending millions of dollars each year on government lobbying and campaign donations, a Center for Responsive Politics analysis finds.

September 10, 2010 | Republican? Former congressional staffer? You are in demand! According to Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times, lobbying groups and political consultants have been wooing Republicans in the past few weeks...

August 27, 2010 | Firm knowledge of congressional members. Understanding of their districts. Near-clairvoyance for their concerns. These are the elements needed to become a successful environmental lobbyist. And for half a day in July, OpenSecrets Blog had unfettered access to an environmental lobbying force in action.

August 27, 2010 | Want to know which sitting member of Congress has received the most money from the oil and gas industry? Which lawmaker has received the most from environmentalists? The alternative energy industry? Now you can find that information in one centralized location on OpenSecrets.org -- presented with sort-able and down-loadable options for your convenience.

August 27, 2010 | Glaciers are melting faster than the U.S. Senate is taking action to limit greenhouse gas emissions and curb global warming. And it's clear that a significant share of this dearth of movement is because of the clout of powerful special interest groups. Even a basic, bipartisan carbon emissions measure hasn't escaped from the treacherous terrain.

August 26, 2010 | How did Republican attorney Joe Miller make such a comeback against incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski? One thing is for sure, Miller benefited from the financial support of the Our Country Deserves Better PAC, a political operation run by the Tea Party Express.

August 25, 2010 | In 1998, the entire alternative energy industry barely even registered as a political player in Washington, spending a mere $2.4 million on lobbying the federal government. Meanwhile, in the same year, the oil and gas, electric utilities and mining industries spent a combined $142 million advancing their own legislative interests. That landscape, however, has changed considerably.

August 23, 2010 | With significant majorities in Congress, a president promising action and favorable public opinion all on their side, many environmentalists believed their political stars had properly – and finally – aligned. Yet even as these groups seemed poised to capitalize on favorable trends, moneyed opponents girded for a fight with more financial capital than ever before.

August 20, 2010 | "If the Campaign Legal Center had infinite resources, we might file complaints in this area out of principal -- to force the Federal Election Commission to either acknowledge that these groups are breaking the law or to claim to the public that the Commission doesn't view the ads as candidate ads," Paul Ryan, an attorney with the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center told OpenSecrets Blog.

August 20, 2010 | COMPUTER GIANTS MERGE AND COMBINE POLITICAL MIGHT: Security technology company McAfee announced Thursday plans for its procurement by microchip manufacturer Intel for $7.68 billion. Both companies have been financially active in politics, but in different ways.

August 16, 2010 | Other than the actual act of legislating, perhaps no business in Washington warrants more thought for politicians than fund-raising. Raising money is, after all -- and as our readers know -- the lifeblood for any politician hoping to keep his or her day job. But that doesn't mean they can't have a little fun doing it,

August 11, 2010 | Offline and online, arguments rage that Facebook is not taking privacy concerns seriously enough. And as public ire has focused on Facebook's privacy policies, Chris Kelly, the company's former chief privacy officer, has become a highly political figure -- running for the post of attorney general in California and donating tens of thousands of dollars to fellow Democrats.

August 11, 2010 | BAUCUS HOSTS "FAMILY WEEKEND" IN MONTANA FOR BIG DONORS: In what has become an annual event, big-time supporters of Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) will pay $2,500 for individuals or $5,000 for political action committees for a weekend getaway at the Big Sky resort, Politico reports. Government watchdog organizations have criticized such events as selling access to lawmakers.

August 11, 2010 | Donors giving $200 or less helped propel anti-establishment challengers in both the Republican and Democratic U.S. Senate primaries in Colorado, where voters Tuesday backed a conservative Republican favored by many Tea Party activists and nearly ousted the third incumbent senator this year.

August 9, 2010 | Here at OpenSecrets.org, we love to talk about our Revolving Door section. That's because ours is the most comprehensive resource for information on some of Washington's most influential insiders -- former members of Congress or federal employees who utilize their experience and connections to help special interests gain access to the government and the legislative process...

August 6, 2010 | PMA GROUP CHARGED IN ETHICS PROBE: Revolving door ex-lobbyist Paul Magliocchetti, once one of Washington's most powerful lobbyists and founder of the PMA Group, a defense lobbying firm. On Thursday, Magliochetti, a former aide on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, stood accused by federal prosecutors of overseeing one of the largest campaign frauds in U.S. history.

August 5, 2010 | For each of the more than 120 industries and special interest areas OpenSecrets.org tracks, we now show you the number and percent of lobbyists we've identified as having spun through the revolving door between government and the influence industry.

July 31, 2010 | More than 11,100 corporations, trade associations, unions and other groups hired 10,500 lobbyists during the second quarter, the Center for Responsive Politics has found -- outnumbering members of Congress roughly 20 to 1. Overall, special interest groups spent more than $852 million on lobbying between April and June.

July 29, 2010 | While some organizations dramatically reduced their investments in federal lobbying during this year's second quarter, others paid out more in fees to lobbyists than during any other quarter since President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, according to a Center for Responsive Politics review of reports filed with the U.S. Senate and U.S. House last week.

July 27, 2010 | Senate Republicans today blocked legislation calling for new disclosure rules for campaign advertisements. A unified Democratic caucus generated 57 "yes" votes -- three shy of the 60 votes needed to break a Republican filibuster and allow the legislation, known as the DISCLOSE Act, to advance to an up-or-down vote.

July 27, 2010 | A Scout's motto is "be prepared" -- and in Washington, D.C., scouting organizations stay prepared with the help of hired lobbyists. Last year, the Girl Scouts reported $199,000 in lobbying expenses, including fees to a firm run by a former member of Congress, while the Boy Scouts paid out $180,000 to a firm that also represents a tobacco company and a foreign government.

July 27, 2010 | President Barack Obama Monday took to the bully pulpit to urge passage of the DISCLOSE Act -- and to criticize Senate Republicans for their staunch opposition to the measure that's aimed at improving campaign finance transparency.

July 26, 2010 | Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has earned millions advising the largest companies in D.C., but insists he provides analysis and not access. But POLITICO reports that some unlikely allies are calling for individuals like Daschle to be registered as lobbyists.

July 23, 2010 | Reports released Thursday by two major Washington, D.C. publications are highlighting the extent of the oil and gas industry's political influence, which has increased in the wake of the BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

July 20, 2010 | Last Thursday, Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Ohio) introduced H.R. 5751, the Fee on Lobbyists Act, which would require lobbyists to pay an annual fee of $25 to the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives and $25 to the Secretary of the U.S. Senate for each client they have. Money raised would be used by to enforce the rules regarding federal lobbyists.

July 16, 2010 | Liz Fowler, a Senate staffer who helped write the Democrat's landmark health care reform legislation after serving as a health insurance industry executive, is now moving up to help implement the new law. But her appointment has drawn outrage from liberal bloggers and activists who call it an unacceptable example of industry influencing policy and a violation of Obama's promise to end the revolving door between the lobbying industry and the government.

July 16, 2010 | The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York invalidated provisions of the law banning campaign contributions from lobbyists and objected to a trigger system for public financing of candidates. Two out of three gubernatorial candidates have received matching state funds for their campaigns.

July 14, 2010 | A negative FDA ruling will likely affect the bottom line of a company that spent $8.7 million on federal lobbying in 2009 and has already spent $2.2 million in the first quarter of this year. GlaxoSmithKline, the drug's manufacturer, has much more than that at stake. It earned $1.1 billion from the drug in 2009, Fortune reports.

July 14, 2010 | OMB HEAD SPINS OUT, NEW ONE SPINS IN: Jacob Lew, Obama's new pick to head the Office of Management and Budget, has more than 30 years of experience in Washington, spinning through the revolving door between the public and private sectors on multiple occasions.

July 13, 2010 | Twenty-eight members of Congress and congressional candidates have received at least $100,000 from lobbyists during the first five quarters of the 2010 election cycle, a Center for Responsive Politics analysis shows.

July 13, 2010 | George Steinbrenner, who died after suffering a heart attack Tuesday morning, owned the New York Yankees since 1973. Steinbrenner's history with politics is as long as his history with baseball. In 1974, he pled guilty to making illegal contributions to President Richard Nixon's reelection campaign two years prior -- an action for which he later received a presidential pardoned. Additionally, he, along with his wife, contributed more than $196,000 to federal candidates and committees since 1989.

July 12, 2010 | Feel like you're going in circles? Maybe you should check out OpenSecrets.org's revolving door database, where we endeavor to track the continuous loop made by government employees and lobbyists.

July 12, 2010 | Now that Spain beat the Netherlands 1-0 to win the World Cup and bathe in the four following years of international glory that comes with it, we wondered, as we would: Does soccer have a lobby? Sure does.

July 7, 2010 | LOBBYISTS TOP LIST OF SENATOR'S BIGGEST CAMPAIGN DONORS: Now seeking her fourth term in office, the donor list for Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) may reflect one of the benefits of incumbency: Lobbyists are the senator's biggest campaign supporters.

July 2, 2010 | Take a little national health care reform, mix it with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and add a jobs bill. It's proving to be a recipe for state and local governments -- some of which are running massive budget deficits -- to spend near-record levels of money hiring professional lobbyists in a bid for federal aid.

July 1, 2010 | Shipping giants FedEx and UPS are both lobbying Congress over a provision in the House version of legislation to reauthorize the House Federal Aviation Administration that would make it easier for workers at FedEx to unionize.

June 30, 2010 | They may be attempting to avoid new limitations on federal lobbying. Perhaps they're seeking to skirt the notoriety of being a federally registered lobbyist. No matter the reason, some lobbyists are reconfiguring their jobs so that they are not required to remain on the congressional rosters of federally registered lobbyists -- or quitting the influence game altogether.But how many have sought this path -- a few? Many? Legions? And what does it mean to deregister? Can this be measured?

June 29, 2010 | At least a dozen lawmakers have held fund-raising events at baseball games at Nationals Park this year, including three slated to play in tonight's annual congressional baseball game, based on a Center for Responsive Politics review of invitations leaked to PoliticalPartyTime.org.

June 29, 2010 | But Byrd's views on climate change altered late in life and he looked liked to be a potential ally of legislation capping carbon emissions. There are doubts whether a freshman Democratic senator from West Virginia could withstand pressure from the coal industry to vote against such legislation.

June 28, 2010 | On the campaign trail, Republican Linda McMahon has proclaimed her freedom from special interests as she spends millions of her own dollars on the race. At the same time, she is opposed to legislation that supporters say would help other candidates be equally as liberated.

June 23, 2010 | Hearings to set to begin Thursday in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, led by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), will shine more light on the ongoing squabble with the Department of Education over issues like incentive pay to recruiters and gainful employment measures. But Congress is just catching up to industry lobbyists on many of the issues.

June 23, 2010 | SLICES WITH JACK: Jack Abramoff, the super-lobbyist who in 2006 pled guilty to multiple felony charges related to a corruption scandal and defrauding his clients, was transferred from federal prison to a halfway house in Maryland earlier this month. Now, it seems, his calling is taking him to a pizza parlor.

June 22, 2010 | The Commodity Futures Trading Commission approved the futures contracts over movie industry objections, but Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) overrode that decision by inserting tough derivatives language into the Senate's version of financial reform. Now, the Motion Picture Association of America "is furiously lobbying members of the House-Senate conference committee to ensure the ban is written into the final bill," Politico reports.

June 16, 2010 | Lincoln offered to compromise on the derivatives provision Monday, but the largest Wall Street banks "quickly indicated that they would lobby fiercely to defeat the entire provision," the New York Times reports.

June 15, 2010 | Between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31, political action committees within the finance, insurance and real estate sector contributed $276,750 to eight House members at the center of a recently launched ethics probe investigating whether lawmakers received money in exchange for votes, the Center for Responsive Politics has found.

June 11, 2010 | Lobbyists for the financial services industry enjoy longstanding ties to the members of Congress who were named this week to the conference committee on financial reform legislation, according to a joint analysis of available data released today by Public Citizen and the Center for Responsive Politics.

June 10, 2010 | The Revolutionary War. The War of 1812. The British Invasion. Put aside that whole "ally" thing during a couple of world wars, and the United States and England have smacked each other around a good bit.

June 9, 2010 | Disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff is out of the slammer, CNN has reported. Four years ago, Abramoff pled guilty to several charges related to defrauding millions from Indian tribes he represented as a lobbyist and corrupting public officials.

June 8, 2010 | The company that owns a pipeline that exploded Monday in north Texas, Houston-based Enterprise Products Company, is on pace spent more on federal lobbying this year than any other year they've lobbied the federal government, according to a Center for Responsive Politics review of lobbying reports.

June 4, 2010 | Hot on the heels of Sestakgate, the White House on Thursday confirmed that it made early overtures to U.S. Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff of Colorado in an effort to keep him from entering the state's democratic primary...

June 3, 2010 | Organizations in the financial services sector have deployed at least 1,447 former federal employees to lobby Congress and federal agencies since the beginning of 2009, according to a joint analysis of federal disclosure records and other data released today by Public Citizen and the Center for Responsive Politics.

May 28, 2010 | During the first quarter of 2010, only a handful of organizations reported lobbying on the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy regarding gays in the military, according to a Center for Responsive Politics review of lobbying reports that explicitly mentioned this measure. Most of the groups identified by the Center supported a repeal of the policy.

May 27, 2010 | BP GOES WITH MUD: After several failed attempts to seal the blown-out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, BP on Wednesday entered a new phase in the ongoing effort. Their weapon of choice? Mud. The National Law Journal also reports that Halliburton, which was involved as a contractor with the now-sunken oil rig, has hired D.C. lobbying powerhouse Patton Boggs for legal counsel.

May 25, 2010 | UNIONS PLAN TO FLEX MUSCLES: Two major unions plan to spend $100 million to influence the upcoming elections, The Hill reports. The American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) intends to invest $67 million and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) will spend $44 million.

May 19, 2010 | DERIVATIVES BATTLE: In a rather startling, but maybe not surprising report, the nonprofit advocacy group, Public Citizen, contends that since the beginning of 2009, financial industry lobbyists have opposed a controversial overhaul of derivatives regulation by a ratio of 11-to-1.

May 18, 2010 | Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) don't agree on health care reform. They don't agree on energy legislation, nor do they agree on immigration. Politically, they may not agree on much at all. However, they do share one distinction. Both have received nearly two-thirds of their campaign contributions from donors who contribute $200 or less, the Federal Election Commission's threshold for itemized disclosure. By comparison, the average House member only received 7 percent of their contributions from such "small donors."

May 17, 2010 | HOOSIER NOMINEE: The Democratic Party of Indiana officially nominated Blue Dog Rep. Brad Ellsworth Saturday to be their party's nominee in the race to fill the Senate seat of retiring Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh. Ellsworth has about $960,000 cash on hand, including large sums from lawyers, lobbyists, labor unions and leadership PACs.

May 13, 2010 | NEW BRITISH GOVERNMENT AGREES TO LOBBYING REFORM: Among the legislative priorities the new coalition government in the United Kingdom has agreed to pursue is regulation of federal lobbying, and possible campaign finance reform measures.

May 12, 2010 | Upon her arrival in the White House, first lady Michelle Obama launched the "Let's Move" campaign, encouraging healthier eating habits and reduced obesity rates -- a campaign for which she formally unveiled the goals Tuesday. Yet as the first lady and lawmakers work to enact these goals, they must navigate substantial corporate interests when making decisions about the strictness of regulations and standards for nutrition.

May 5, 2010 | The loss of Obey, the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and a close ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is a blow to Democrats in a year when anti-incumbent sentiment seems to be on the rise. The Appropriations chairmanship is one of the most powerful positions in Congress, and Obey's retirement may kick off a fierce fight between potential successors.

April 30, 2010 | In 2009, the company spent a massive $16 million to influence legislation. During the first quarter of 2010, it spent $3.53 million on federal lobbying efforts, ranking it second (behind ConocoPhillips) among all oil and gas industry interests.

April 30, 2010 | As the Center for Responsive Politics on Thursday released a detailed report on federal lobbying activity during this year's first quarter, one particular statistic kept flashing like strobe lights at a streaking stunt: 3,785 percent.

April 29, 2010 | Hoards of hired K Street guns are in high demand as President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats seek to implement grand legislative plans. And a Center for Responsive Politics review of recently filed lobbying reports indicates companies, trade associations, unions and other groups spent nearly $1 billion on lobbying during the first three months of 2010.

April 29, 2010 | That's the message some House and Senate lawmakers sent to corporations, unions and trade associations today in unveiling legislation designed to increase transparency and accountability in the nation's campaign finance system.

April 27, 2010 | Hundreds of lobbyists are primed to swarm Capitol Hill to advocate on behalf of a wide variety of business interests and ideological groups, all of which have a stake in immigration reform policy – Congress' focus du jour.

April 27, 2010 | Retiring Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), the chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology, is taking heat for racking up travel expenses on the taxpayer's dime, according to Roll Call. Gordon announced he was retiring in December, but has since visited or plans to visit Denmark, Italy, France, Switzerland and China -- all on official business and paid for by taxpayers.

April 26, 2010 | A bill to overhaul the nation's financial regulatory system is due for a pivotal test vote in the Senate this evening, and all eyes will be on Senate Republicans, who promised to filibuster the legislation without certain changes.

April 22, 2010 | Freshman Rep. Joseph Cao (R-La.) is one of just three House Republicans bucking their party leadership by offering appropriation requests for fiscal year 2011. Cao's requests -- better known as earmarks -- total about $517 million, of which $800,000 would be destined for two projects at a hospital in New Orleans. While that's itself a small slice of Cao's total requests, it's notable since Cao also accepted campaign contributions from two of its executives.

April 22, 2010 | REVOLVERS, BEWARE: The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen is calling on retiring members of Congress to pledge to not immediately become lobbyists after leaving their current positions. The group asked 47 lawmakers to sign a promise, but so far, not a one has made the commitment.

April 21, 2010 | As President Barack Obama works with the Democratic Congress to advance his ambitious legislative priorities, lobbying efforts by special interest groups continue unabated. Lobbying reports for the first three months of 2010 were due to the Clerk of the House and Secretary of the Senate by midnight last night, and a preliminary Center for Responsive Politics analysis of these reports show many major players continuing to shell out big dollars on their lobbying operations.

April 20, 2010 | Goldman Sachs has plenty of lawyers. And it also employs a number of powerful lobbyists, too, to help make its case before a federal government that may be a little less inclined to be chummy with it than it was, oh, a week ago. Hence, our PolitiQuizz question to you this week.

April 15, 2010 | The White House's top ethics lawyer, Norman Eisen, is reportedly being floated for consideration as the president's top diplomat in the Czech Republic. If Eisen is selected, he would join many of President Barack Obama's prior ambassador picks in having helped raise significant sums of campaign cash for the president and other Democrats.

April 14, 2010 | More than 125 former congressional personnel, from aides on the banking committees to elected officials, are now working on behalf of financial companies, using their expertise and connections to influence legislation that is meant to regulate the financial industry

April 8, 2010 | The cost of the 2010 election cycle is on pace to break the record for a midterm election, set during the 2006 cycle. And across the board, Democrats, who now control the White House and both chambers of Congress, are on the receiving end of far more campaign cash than they were four years ago, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis.

April 6, 2010 | A new report from the Government Accountability Office has concluded that there remain "opportunities to strengthen lobbyists' understanding" of federal reporting requirements. The report, published on Thursday, examined the LD-2 lobbying disclosure reports filed with the Clerk of the House and Secretary of the Senate, as well as the LD-203 reports that detail lobbyists' federal political contributions, between October 2008 and September of last year.

April 5, 2010 | So, no. A giant, basket-toting rabbit doesn't formally lobby the federal government. Nor does the International Amalgamated Lily Growers Union or the U.S. Consortium of Fluffy Chicks. But close.

March 30, 2010 | In 1998, the entire alternative energy industry barely even registered as a political player in Washington, spending a mere $2.4 million on lobbying the federal government. Meanwhile, in the same year, the oil and gas, electric utilities and mining industries spent a combined $142 million advancing their own legislative interests. That landscape, however, has changed considerably.

March 30, 2010 | PUSHING FOR A MORE TRANSPARENT CONGRESS: With input from us here at the Center for Responsive Politcs and our friends at the Sunlight Foundation, Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) introduced new legislation to shine more sunshine on many federal records.

March 29, 2010 | Despite Barack Obama's pledge to limit special influence participation in his administration -- he's sought to prohibit lobbyists from serving on federal advisory panels, for example -- a half-dozen of these new appointees have strong union or special interest ties, or are themselves former registered lobbyists.

March 25, 2010 | As the Center for Responsive Politics celebrates Sunshine Week this year, we commend the steps taken by the White House and Congress for greater government transparency. Neither the White House nor Congress, though, should rest on their laurels. Despite the good progress made via some specific steps, there remains much to be done. Here are a several matters that require attention this year.

March 19, 2010 | Time has rarely been an ally of President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats seeking to enact comprehensive health insurance reform. And the longer they took, the larger the army of special interest lobbyists grew. By the end of the fourth quarter when both the House and the Senate adopted versions of the bill, the number of clients had increased by nearly 300 percent, the Center for Responsive Politics found.

March 19, 2010 | Two recent articles in Politico highlight the precarious position in which Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) now finds himself as a result of his opposition to health care reform legislation that's primed for a vote Sunday.

March 17, 2010 | WIFE OF SUPREME COURT JUSTICE AIMS TO GAIN FROM CITIZENS UNITED: The Supreme Court shook up the world of money-in-politics when it opened the doors to increased corporate spending in the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

March 16, 2010 | TUESDAY SUNSHINE: More than a score of senators like the freedom of communicating instantaneously with their constituents via Twitter but have been reticent about giving constituents the freedom to quickly learn about their campaign donors and fund-raising sources.

March 12, 2010 | Faster than Rep. Eric Massa could resign his congressional seat, members of the House of Representatives are this week engaged in a game of one-upmanship centered on who can slap more limits on congressional earmarks, which have delivered billions of dollars worth of no-bid contracts to thousands of companies and organizations.

March 4, 2010 | The Republican National Committee is planning to raise money during 2010 midterm elections by capitalizing on 'fear' of President Barack Obama and a promise to 'save the country from trending toward socialism.'

March 1, 2010 | It came with, perhaps, an overabundance in interest in learning Sunday night that President Barack Obama will this week ship a case of Molson Canadian to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper -- the spoils of a bet lost on the United States v. Canada Olympic hockey gold medal finals.

February 24, 2010 | What do AT&T, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, the Teamsters Union, U.S. Steel, Lowe's, the NAACP, the Colorado Farm Bureau and the City of St. Louis all have in common? Give up? They're part of the motley crew of fewer than three-dozen entities that reported lobbying specifically on the "public option" last year.

February 22, 2010 | WHITE HOUSE, REPUBLICANS READY FOR HEALTH CARE SHOWDOWN: President Barack Obama is slated to today release text of a broad "starting point" for a televised health care reform summit later this week with congressional Republicans. Any good reason to think that lobbyists won't be hard at work, too, as politicians attempt to restart all-but-dormant reform efforts?

February 18, 2010 | Opensecrets.org has remade its Revolving Door section. Featuring a new opening page, we're highlighting some of our most intreguing information and data about government officials who've become lobbyists -- and vice versa.

February 17, 2010 | Poodly puffballs, giant hulk-dogs and glorified gerbils alike pranced, danced and yelped their way through New York City's Madison Square Garden on Tuesday, with judges at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show ultimately bestowing top honors on a Scottish terrier. Democratic Blue Dogs and Bo the presidential canine aside, what does man' best friend have to do with politics? A good deal, it turns out.

February 16, 2010 | Federal lobbying soared to a record $3.5 billion last year, as lawmakers clocked long hours and worked at a pace to be, in the opinion of one congressional scholar, the most productive Congress in decades. This translates to approximately $1.3 million spent on lobbying for every hour that Congress was in session in 2009, the Center for Responsive Politics has found.

February 13, 2010 | With the 2010 Winter Olympics having commenced this weekend in Vancouver, politics are hardly a focus of competition waged not in governmental halls, but on hillsides, tracks and skating surfaces. Once upon an Olympic prelude, however, the International Olympic Committee, tasked then with coordinating the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, vaulted into the rarified eshelon of million dollar federal lobbying forces, a Center for Responsive Politics analysis indicates

February 12, 2010 | The economy stunk. Corporations slashed jobs. And some firms, once juggernauts of American industry, simply ceased to exist. But for federal lobbyists, 2009 proved to be a year of riches unlike any other, a Center for Responsive Politics analysis indicates.

February 8, 2010 | In 2009 alone, Toyota employed 31 federal lobbyists -- including a former member of Congress and numerous ex-congressional staffers -- and spent nearly $5.4 million to lobby the federal government, a Center for Responsive Politics analysis indicates.

February 8, 2010 | Rep. John Murtha, a long-time Democratic lawmaker as popular with his Pennsylvania constituents as he was polarizing on the national political scene, died this afternoon after experiencing complications from gallbladder surgery.

February 8, 2010 | Since Washington, D.C., today is covered by nearly three feet of white stuff, and the city is effectively shut down, who better to highlight for this week's PolitiQuizz than Sen. Olympia Snowe?

February 5, 2010 | Government watchdog and environmentalist groups are accusing William Magwood, President Barack Obama's nomineee to the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission, of conflicts of interest that may complicate his appointment. Magwood faces aconfirmation hearing Tuesday before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, where lawmakers will question him on whether he's fit to serve on the commission, which is tasked with protecting public health, safety and the environment where nuclear energy issues are concerned.

February 5, 2010 | On Thursday, ProPublica published a fantastic story about the role lobbying is taking in the world of rum and tax breaks. The article focuses on alcohol producer Diageo, known for its popular labels Dom Pérignon and Captain Morgan, who is at a center of a fight between Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

February 4, 2010 | MONEY IN MIAMI: Democratic senators and K Street lobbyists hit the beach over the weekend at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee retreat at the Ritz-Carlton South Beach Resort, an event with the purpose of raising money for Democratic Senate candidates in the 2010 election.

January 29, 2010 | Embattled Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind.) announced at a press conference today that he would not seek re-election. Buyer, first elected to the U.S. House in 1992, comes from a heavily Republican district and was expected to easily win re-election.

January 28, 2010 | More than 15,600 companies and organizations spent at least $3.2 billion on federal lobbying in 2009, the Center for Responsive Politics has found, based on a preliminary analysis of lobbying data filed with the U.S. Senate.

January 28, 2010 | President Barack Obama, standing before a full session of Congress within the U.S. Capitol, accused the U.S. Supreme Court of opening "the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign corporations" through its 5-4 ruling last week in the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. A visably agitated Justice Samuel Alito, sitting just feet away from Obama as he delivered the presidential State of the Union address, shook his head, made a face and appeared to mouth "simply not true."

January 21, 2010 | Will Sen. Chris Dodd crack under pressure from the financial industry and opponents in Congress and drop the idea to create the independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency as part of financial regulatory reform legislation?

January 20, 2010 | On Tuesday, the voters of Massachusetts elected Republican Scott Brown in a special U.S. Senate election, defeating Democrat Martha Coakley. In a state where every representative to the U.S. House is a Democrat, Brown's victory is a shocking win....

January 15, 2010 | AID EFFORTS UNDERWAY IN HAITI: Following Tuesday's earthquakes that devastated Port-au-Prince, aid efforts have begun to assist the city into recovery. Countries around the world are contributing to the effort including Washington's lobbying industry.

January 14, 2010 | With Google this week enduring a Chinese attack on its computer systems -- and the Obama administration and FBI taking keen interest in the development -- the tech giant may be poised for an even greater uptick in its political influence efforts.

January 7, 2010 | WHAT NEXT FOR DODD, DORGAN & THEIR SEATS?: The dust is still settling from the recent announcements of Democratic Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) that each would retire at the end of the term and not seek re-election. Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones notes that Dorgan mentions a desire to work in the private sector on energy policy after he leaves office, and she asks if the coal lobby will be Dorgan's next home. Dodd, meanwhile, has yet to specify what's next in his future. Where do you think Dodd and Dorgan will end up?

December 23, 2009 | 'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE A CHRISTMAS EVE SHOWDOWN: Yes, the Senate is preparing to vote on a health care reform bill Thursday, on Christmas Eve. Members have been engaged in a flurry of legislative back-and-forth, seemingly incapable of much beside the task at hand, particularly considering that they'll likely spend Christmas itself in Washington, D.C. But alas, this hasn't stopped two senators from opposite ends of the political spectrum from penning a pair of dueling 'Twas the Night Before Christmas spoofs.

December 19, 2009 | An army of congressional insiders -- from former aides and top staffers to ex-congressmen themselves -- have registered as lobbyists to represented hundreds of health care clients fight federal reform, a new report by the Tribune Newspapers Washington Bureau, Medill News Service and Center for Responsive Politics indicates.

December 18, 2009 | HEY, DOG! Sorry for the terrible attempt at slang, but that's what the Blue Dogs, the fiscally Conservative coalition of Democrats, must be saying to their three new members: Representatives Scott Murphy (D-N.Y.), Betsy Markey (D-Colo.) and Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.).

December 17, 2009 | House Resolution 390 will not result in troop deployments to Afghanistan, an overhaul of the U.S. health care system or the bolstering of an economy in tatters. But because it advocates a new college football playoff format, the legislation, in the minds of millions of fans and at least a few congressional members, is all the same a matter of national import.

December 16, 2009 | JUST SAY NO TO (CANADIAN) DRUGS: Drug makers spending a bazillion dollars to lobby the federal government? Shocker! The pharmaceutical and health products industry is only the year's top industry, in terms of lobbying dollars spent, among the 121 different industries we track.

December 14, 2009 | ILLINOIS POLITICS STILL AN ETHICS BACKWATER, SEVERAL STATE CANDIDATES ARGUE: Gubernatorial candidates in Illinois -- a state notorious for electing governors who end up in prison -- say politicos attempts at governmental reform are too weak.

December 10, 2009 | OY VEY! ORRIN HATCH SINGS JEWS PRAISES, BUT JEWS DON'T ALWAYS DIG HIS POLITICS: Sen. Orrin Hatch so loves Jews that the very Mormon politico from decidedly un-Jewish Utah has written a song -- yes, a song -- to help celebrate Hanukkah.

December 7, 2009 | LESS PERKY FOR BUNDLERS?: Some bundlers and big donors for President Barack Obama may have played significant roles in his transition team and have been tapped for plumb ambassadorships, but several fundraisers for Obama are complaining to the Washington Post that there aren't enough perks.

December 4, 2009 | My feet would have been aflame long ago had my calling to follow the money literally required walking along that shady trail between the bank accounts of special interests and the hands of federal lawmakers. Although I'm called now to a new adventure, I walk away with the utmost conviction that CRP's work is more relevant and important now than perhaps at any other time in its 26-year history.

December 2, 2009 | SCROOGED! LOBBYISTS PUT HOLIDAY PARTIES ON ICE: Without a windfall of cash compiled on the backs of elfin slave labor, and facing grinchy federal lobbying rules, lobbyists are axing holiday parties like a lumberjack in a forest of douglas firs.

December 1, 2009 | Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) spoke yesterday with a local radio station about his affair with an aide's wife and his role in securing a new job for the aide. During the interview, Ensign called the affair a "huge mistake" and maintained that he "complied with all Senate ethics rules and applicable laws" in helping get the aide a new job in a lobbying firm.

November 30, 2009 | Legislation aimed at regulating the securities and investment industry is as complex as the industry itself. But the trade groups representing these interests all seem to have at least one thing in common: they fear additional government regulation will damage their business, which especially concerns them given the ailing economy.

November 30, 2009 | Make sure your browser is set to House.gov this afternoon, when the U.S. House of Representatives will be moving toward transparency by making members' office expenditures available electronically.

November 23, 2009 | Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) chairs the powerful Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. Dodd is now spearheading new efforts to tackle financial sector regulatory reform. Over the past 20 years, Dodd's most generous campaign supporter has also been the finance, insurance and real estate sector, which is filled with companies directly affected by legislation shepherded by the Banking Committee.

November 19, 2009 | The various companies and trade groups within the finance and credit industry have contributed about $62.4 million to federal candidates, committees and leadership PACs since 1989, with 62 percent of that sum going to Republicans. In the 2008 election cycle, however, the employees and political action committees of these organizations directed a majority of their money to Democrats for the first time since the 1990 election.

November 19, 2009 | Although Bachus isn't new to the House Financial Services Committee, he's relatively new to the committee's ranking member position, which he assumed in 2007. Since 1992, employees and political action committees associated with the financial sector have given Bachus $4 million -- exponentially more than any other sector during that time.

November 18, 2009 | Risk and uncertainty are as certain as death and taxes. So, to share the burden of risk and hedge against the full financial liability, companies have long offered consumers a variety of insurance products. Facing the prospect of new regulation, the insurance industry is on pace to break a record $154 million it spent on federal lobbying efforts last year. During the first nine months of this year, insurers spent $122 million and hired 953 lobbyists.

November 18, 2009 | BANK ON A CASH GRAB: The financial services industry has funneled two-and-a-half times more money to members of the Senate and House banking committees, reveals a new report by Public Citizen, which uses Center for Responsive Politics data.

November 17, 2009 | Viewed as a champion of regulatory reform, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) is an advocate of new regulations regarding financial markets, products and institutions -- including new regulation regarding credit derivatives, "dark pool" markets and hedge funds. Within the Banking Committee, he is chairman of the securities, insurance and investment subcommittee.

November 17, 2009 | On Monday night, the Obama administration announced its intent to nominate Beatrice Wilkinson Welters to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. Welters and her husband, Anthony, an executive with UnitedHealth Group, co-founded the AnBryce Foundation in 1995, which provides academic and leadership programs for underserved youth. They also bundled at least $300,000 for President Barack Obama's committees and have been prolific campaign contributions to federal candidates and committees.

November 16, 2009 | As the United States continues digging itself out of a recession, the nation is poised to re-emerge in a dramatically altered financial climate. And after years of enjoying relatively little regulation, commercial banks, credit companies, hedge funds and securities and investment companies are facing the most extensive overhaul by the federal government since the Great Depression. Over the next seven days, Capital Eye will be following the special interest money in our "Crossing Wall Street" series as both the House and Senate tackle financial regulation.

November 16, 2009 | Congress often acts as a type of bank for bankers themselves -- a place executives can direct their cash, perhaps hoping to collect interest in the form of a legislative favor. The interest rate on that premium appears to be low these days, however, as commercial banks could face a sweeping regulatory overhaul in the coming months.

November 12, 2009 | Legislation in Congress is written in a dense legalese that frequently references other sections of U.S. Code. Given this fact, Nick Baumann at Mother Jones suggests that process reform might be better served by posting the gist of the bill online using plain English -- like the "conceptual language" voted upon by the Senate Finance Committee.

November 5, 2009 | The National Wildlife Federation has released a limited-edition trading card but these bad boys won't have your favorite grand slam baseball player on them. Instead, the first trading card commemorates the amount of cash Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) has collected from the oil and gas industry -- $1.2 million since 1989.

November 4, 2009 | It's not, politically speaking, morning again in America for Republicans. At least not yet. Democrats, oh, still have the Senate, the House and the White House. But man, if you're a member of the GOP faithful, here's a poster for you on what's bound to be an awfully good day today.

November 3, 2009 | HAPPY ELECTION DAY: Voters today in Virginia, New Jersey, New York, Maine and elsewhere are heading to the polls to cast their votes in races -- some high-profile, some less so. How will the high-profile contests in Virginia, New Jersey, New York and Maine turn out? Leave your predictions in the comments!

November 2, 2009 | Lobbyists this year began terminating their formal registrations with the federal government at significantly higher levels than usual, a joint study by OMB Watch and the Center for Responsive Politics has found.

October 30, 2009 | 2009 is on pace to be another bumper year for lobbyists. During the third quarter, corporations, unions, trade associations and other special interests spent $849 million on federal lobbying, bringing the year-to-date total to $2.5 billion. Perhaps not surprisingly, the sectors that could be affected most by the Obama administration's domestic agenda -- particularly health, business and energy -- have been some of the biggest spenders over the course of the year.

October 29, 2009 | At least 44 lawmakers have left their congressional seats mid-term since 1990, and at least 16 of them went on to work at lobbying firms or at companies that hired lobbyists, CRP has found. Here, we take a closer look at a few of these individuals, examining which industries and clients they're now representing and the campaign cash they received while in Congress.

October 29, 2009 | BCRA IMPACTING PREZ FUND-RAISING BLITZ?: President Barack Obama has now clocked 26 fund-raisers since his inauguration. President George W. Bush, by comparison, at this point in his presidency, had logged only six fund-raising events. According to CBS' Mark Knoller, there's another dimension to the picture: In Bush's first six fundraisers, he was able to raise $48 million, while Obama has raised just $21 million over the course of the first 21 events.

October 27, 2009 | TECH COMPANIES FIND (K&L) GATES OPEN TO VISCLOSKY: Want $2.4 million in earmark funds? It appears all you need to do is start a company, hire the right lobbying firm and wait two weeks. At least this was the case with start-up company NanoSonix, which won Rep. Pete Visclosky's (D-Ind.) support only 16 days after filing its incorporation papers and hiring lobbying firm K&L Gates to represent its interests on Capitol Hill.

October 26, 2009 | REAP WHAT YOU SOW: It's late October, the harvest season in many of the country's agricultural regions. And from a weather standpoint, it may not be a great one in some parts. That doesn't mean, however, that lobbyists aren't benefiting this year of a cornucopia of interest from farmers and growers.

October 23, 2009 | ANTI-RAPE AMENDMENT HAS LOBBYIST FOES: Defense contractors are lobbying Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) to remove or water down language from the defense appropriations bill that prohibited defense contractors from denying victims of assault or rape the ability to bring their case to court, reports Sam Stein at the Huffington Post, who also cites CRP data in his article.

October 21, 2009 | Some of the usual suspects with K Street clout have once again filed lobbying reports demonstrating their prowess on Capitol Hill, a Center for Responsive Politics review of newly filed third quarter lobbying reports has found. Leading the way was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a leading opponent of many initiatives backed by the Obama administration.

October 21, 2009 | Last year, visitors to OpenSecrets.org used our search function more than 15 million times. And when they did, we asked them to refine their search and to tell us what type of thing they were looking for: an influential person, an organization, a donor, keyword or zip code. Well, not anymore! Today we are releasing…

October 21, 2009 | MCCAIN-FEINGOLD? ZZZZZZZ. We've been waiting for weeks for an outcome to Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which could very well change the nature of federal campaign finance laws as we know them. Nothing yet. But it's given us time to ponder why federal legislation always has such b-o-r-i-n-g names. (Shays-Meehan? Sounds like some sort of chronic thyroid condition.) Congress, let's get creative.

October 19, 2009 | ARE WE ALL JUST PRISONERS HERE OF OUR OWN DEVICE? Seems a little odd, perhaps that U.S. Sens. Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar -- both Minnesota Democrats -- would team up with the state's very Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who may very well seek his party's presidential nomination in 2012. Over what, pray tell? Medical device firms, which have a notable corporate base in the North Star State.

October 16, 2009 | A LIBERTARIAN STREAK IN WHOLE FOODS: John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods recently told Reason TV that he voted for Libertarian Bob Barr in the 2008 presidential election. According to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis, Mackey's sole contributions to federal candidates and committees have been to Libertarians -- totaling $6,500 between 1996 and 2000.

October 15, 2009 | Republican members of the House last week attempted to oust Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) from his powerful chairmanship of the House Ways & Means Committee for the duration of a House Ethics Committee investigation into alleged ethical misconduct surrounding his real estate investments and dubious personal financial disclosure reports. And although the effort failed and Rangel can sit tight for now, signs that he's sustained political damage are emerging.

October 14, 2009 | The House Financial Services Committee today begins marking up a bill that would create a new consumer protection agency and increase regulation of a number of financial products. Even as members of the committee consider how to prevent another economic collapse, they may have another financial issue in mind -- the industries opposing the measure have contributed $77.6 million to the 71 members of the committee since 1989.

October 9, 2009 | President Barack Obama said he hoped his Nobel Peace Prize could be used as a means to give momentum to causes including nuclear nonproliferation and addressing climate change. And momentum may be needed to fight the resistance among some lawmakers and well-heeled special interests.

October 8, 2009 | Despite a lack of support from key leaders in his own political party, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) said resolutely this week that he has no plans to resign from Congress in the face of accusations that he's deeply embroiled in an ethics scandal. But it's not just his own party's support at risk -- campaign contributors, current and former staffers and even lobbyists may be re-considering their ties to a man who once served as the GOP's primary fund-raiser in the Senate.

October 8, 2009 | Two years ago under the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, federal lobbyists and their employers were required to start disclosing their campaign contributions to lawmakers when they file what is called an LD-203 report. While there is no evidence that the new law has dissuaded lobbyists from making political donations, CRP found a 22 percent drop in the number of registered lobbyists who have made these contributions when comparing the first half of 2007 to the first half of 2009.

October 8, 2009 | Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) is one of the top recipients of money from Turkish-American groups. But the Ohio Election Commission has ruled that her 2008 third-party challenger David Krikorian made a false statement when he claimed Schmidt took money from "Turkish sponsored" political action committees.

October 8, 2009 | IS THE HONEYMOON OVER?: Pundits this week have been speculating whether President Barack Obama has begun to lose favor among the media and are pointing to a recent Saturday Night Live skit as evidence. But Democrats have maintained financial support from NBC employees so far this year.

October 5, 2009 | Apple reversed course over the weekend and approved an iPhone app that uses CRP data that the company called "politically charged." Apple itself is not apolitical -- it spends cash on lobbying and its employees contribute money to lawmakers.

October 5, 2009 | REPUBLICANS WRANGLE WITH RANGEL'S CONDUCT: Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) has been the center of an ongoing ethics probe and recent calls from Republicans to oust him from his chairmanship of the powerful House Ways & Means Committee means the spotlight isn't going to dim any time soon.

October 2, 2009 | ADULTEROUS SENATOR & AIDE MAY HAVE VIOLATED REVOLVING DOOR RULES: Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) helped his long-time friend and aide Douglas Hampton join a political consulting firm and lined up several campaign donors as his lobbying clients, after Ensign had an affair with Hampton's wife, the New York Times reports. And, the Times notes, subsequent meetings and actions may have violated the ban on lobbying by former Senate staffers within 12 months after their departures.

October 1, 2009 | A new collaborative investigation between the Sunlight Foundation and Center for Responsive Politics shows that since January 2007, more than 500 individual lobbyists donated roughly $2.8 million to 61 members of Congress who took money from at least 10 lobbyists and also received money from their clients' PACs or employees. Among the recipients were 11 senators who sit on the Senate Finance Committee.

October 1, 2009 | GREEN POLICY MAKES THE CHAMBER BLUE: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce took another hit this week after Nike announced it would be resigning from the organization's board because of concerns over the Chamber's position on climate change legislation. As these groups sever ties with the nation's largest spender on lobbying, they won't be able to tap into the Chamber's vast connections with Congress on other issues.

October 1, 2009 | A month-long collaborative investigation by the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics has uncovered never-before-seen webs of campaign contributions from outside lobbyists and their clients, who are all important players in the healthcare reform, to key members of Congress.

September 25, 2009 | ALL SHOOK UP: First, President Barack Obama calls for registered lobbyists to be ixnayed from federal advisory boards and committees. And now, not a day later, the American League of Lobbyists' Dave Wenhold is calling out Obama as Captain Anti-Transparency.

September 24, 2009 | Who better to bundle: Regulations intended to shed light on bundling by lobbyists are coming up short. According to an Associated Press review published last week, which compared invitations to fund-raisers hosted by lobbyists and campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission from March 19 through June, lawmakers have yet to disclose funds they raised at 195 events.

September 23, 2009 | Kaiser, who has worked for the Washington Post for 46 years, talked Tuesday night at the National Press Club about the skyrocketing cost of political campaigns and the boom of the lobbying industry. Kaiser shares the body of his observations about politics and campaigns in his new 400-page tome So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government.

September 23, 2009 | Now you can search the Center for Responsive Politics' lobbying database by "covered position," which means you can type in the name of a lawmaker, committee or agency to bring up a list of registered lobbyists who reported working for that lawmaker, committee or agency in the last 20 years.

September 22, 2009 | MOTIVE: POLITICAL FUNDRAISING?: Hassan Nemazee, head of a private equity firm, has been indicted for defrauding Bank of America and HSBC, adding to his indictment for defrauding Citigroup. Nemazee and his family have raised $824,500 total for at least 75 lawmakers since 1993, including President Barack Obama ($13,800), Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ($33,500) and Vice President Joe Biden ($23,700) of Massachusetts.

September 21, 2009 | We usually reserve Capital Eye Opener's "CRP in the News" nugget for the end of this, our daily a.m. posting. But we're going upside down today, if only because of the overwhelming reaction to our report last week about the political activity of folks associated with the National Football League.

September 18, 2009 | WATCHDOG NAMES MOST CORRUPT LAWMAKERS: The nonprofit ethics watchdog Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) has released their fifth annual report on members of Congress who they deem have engaged in unethical -- and sometimes illegal -- behavior. Fifteen lawmakers made this year's list, including Sens. Mitch McConnell, Roland Burris and John Ensign, and Reps. Jesse Jackson, Jr., John Murtha, Pete Visclosky and Don Young.

September 17, 2009 | CONGRESSIONAL GRIDLOCK: In just a few short weeks, on Oct. 1, the current transportation authorization bill will expire. Unless Congress acts -- and fast -- this will leave the federal transportation system without any money. As with any major legislation, lobbyists are coming out in droves to influence the shape of a new transportation bill.

September 15, 2009 | All but seven Republicans stood by Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) and voted against a Congressional resolution to disapprove of his "you lie" outburst last week. Several of them, including much of the House Republican leadership, have also backed Wilson with financial support in recent years.

September 15, 2009 | THE RICHER AND POORER: Roll Call has released their annual 50 Richest Members of Congress list, finding that members returning from last year lost 10 percent of their wealth during 2008. Their top 50 are worth almost $171 million less than the previous batch.

September 14, 2009 | HAPPY (OR NOT-SO-HAPPY) ANNIVERSARY, FINANCIAL CRASH: President Barack Obama is scheduled to speak from Wall Street today about the state of the economy exactly one year after the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers. He will likely argue for more stringent regulation of the financial industry and call for more accountability.

September 11, 2009 | SLAP ME SILLY: Say you're a California assemblyman. And your name is Mike Duvall. And you hope to win re-election. And you're married. And you want to stay married. Then, please heed this advice: Make sure to reveal your love for spanking lobbyists with whom you're apparently having affairs while television cameras are not rolling.

September 10, 2009 | Leadership of two committees in the U.S. Senate has gotten a shake-up with the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) will take the reigns of the HELP Committee, which Kennedy had chaired. Then, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) will be the new head of the Agriculture Committee.

September 10, 2009 | DOLLARS FOR DISRUPTIONS?: The liberal fundraising group ActBlue is directing individuals to contribute campaign cash to Rob Miller, the Democrat challenging incumbent Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), who shouted "you lie" during the president's address. So far, they've helped Miller raise more than $100,000 since last night.

September 3, 2009 | So far in 2009, 73 local, state or territorial governmental entities have spent at least $100,000 between January and June to lobby the federal government. More than 750 have spent at least $20,000.

September 3, 2009 | THE HONEYMOON IS OVER: It appears that Wal-Mart just can't catch a break where unions are concerned. The United Food and Commercial Workers is starting a coalition that "calls for improvements in the company's wages, health care, and environmental and labor policies," according to the Washington Post.

September 2, 2009 | The death of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) has left Democratic lawmakers scrambling to fill his seat in the midst of intense debate over one of Kennedy's highest legislative priorities -- health care reform. We thought we'd take a look at some of the possible candidates and how their fundraising compares to that of the late senator.

September 2, 2009 | TICKLE ME, OBAMA: It's a big responsibility for a little red monster. But Elmo, the furry red creature from Sesame Street that's prone to spontaneous song and hysterical giggling, is the White House's latest appointed soldier in the prevention of swine flu.

August 28, 2009 | TED KENNEDY'S ROSTER OF A-LIST STAFFERS: Sen. Ted Kennedy, who died Tuesday, leaves behind current and former staffers who are among Washington's most experienced, reports the Washington Post's Philip Rucker. Indeed, that doesn't only apply to the public sector, as former Kennedy staffers have historically flocked to the private sector to become lobbyists, our research indicates. Among them: Former Kennedy counsel Tony Podesta, who now runs notable lobbying firm Podesta Group.

August 25, 2009 | ARE YOU JOE THE PLUMBER, OR JOE THE NEUROSURGEON? A little problem out in Tennessee. Seems that while state law requires gubernatorial candidates to list the occupations of their campaign donors, some candidates are simply ignoring the provision.

August 21, 2009 | O, SAY, CAN YOU TWEET: There's nary a member of Congress who isn't busy tweeting on Twitter and posting Facebook status messages. These two social networking tools are now an integral part of the campaign arsenal -- but the companies responsible for our daily dose of instant chit chat are also making some political moves of their own.

August 19, 2009 | Political action committees and individuals associated with health industries, each of which are intimately involved in the nation's ongoing health care reform debate, are donating more to federal candidates during the second quarter of 2009 than the first quarter, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis.

August 19, 2009 | CAMERA ROLLING: As we've been gearing up for the Sept. 9 Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, we've come across some interesting (and sometimes quirky) YouTube footage that helps explain at least part of the story.

August 18, 2009 | Democratic Party committees raised only slightly more than their Republican counterparts during the year's first six months, closing the gap between the two parties that existed during the 2008 election cycle.

August 11, 2009 | Today we've added a new feature to our website that will help you connect the dots between specific industries and the lobbyists going to bat for them. Now on OpenSecrets.org you can find a list of lobbyists and their firms associated with more than 100 industries. Sort by lobbyist or lobbying firm and download a spreadsheet that will show you the ties between the lobbyists, the firm employing them and their clients.

August 4, 2009 | One of the nation's hottest U.S. Senate contests is officially off to the races, as Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) today is officially challenging incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter, a long-time Republican who switched his party allegiance to become a Democrat earlier this year.

July 28, 2009 | Lobbyists were paid at least $814.5 million for their services between April and June, according to a more complete analysis of their quarterly reports filed last week with the Senate Office of Public Records. This represents an increase of less than 1 percent compared to the first quarter.

July 27, 2009 | Today, the Center for Responsive Politics begins a daily feature at the Capital Eye blog highlighting news, events, articles and off-beat tidbits from the world of money and lobbying in politics. We call it Capital Eye Opener — and we hope you begin calling it a part of your morning routine. So, without further ado: •…

July 24, 2009 | Media observer Alex Beam discussed his experience with OpenSecrets.org's Donor Lookup feature in a Boston Globe column published this morning and called his sojourn to our site "delightful."

July 23, 2009 | For years, congressional lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have regarded the Lewin Group, a Virginia-based research firm, as an unbiased, nonpartisan auditor of health care legislation. Yet as the Washington Post reported Wednesday, few who have cited recent Lewin data mention that the company belongs to a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, which opposes the public health option and has given money to the lawmakers citing Lewin's stats.

July 22, 2009 | Lobbyists were paid at least $349.2 million for their services between April and June, according to a partial analysis of their quarterly reports filed with the Senate Office of Public Records on Monday.

July 20, 2009 | Lobbying firms and their clients must turn in their second quarter reports to the Senate Office of Public Records tonight, and the Center for Responsive Politics will be grabbing that data, processing it and updating our lobbying database.

July 16, 2009 | The securities and investment industry may be the 13th-heaviest spender on lobbyists. And the two institutions under fire this morning, Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, both make the top 100 list of all-time contributors in federal politics. But lawmakers on the House Oversight panel have received little of their money.

July 10, 2009 | At least one member of Congress -- Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) -- this week weighed in on whether telecom companies are violating anti-trust laws. Kohl sent a letter to various agencies asking them to investigate whether big wireless companies are engaged in anti-competitive practices. Unlike many other lawmakers, however, Kohl, does not rely on telecoms to fill his campaign coffers.

July 9, 2009 | Interest groups have filled lawmakers' campaign coffers with cash, and spent millions on lobbyists to promote their positions. So it's not entirely surprising that some lawmakers can't make up their minds on health care reform. Here are a handful of examples of members of the Senate, who have tried to position themselves on multiple sides of the health care debate.

July 9, 2009 | Though health care companies and consumer advocacy organizations are the most active players in the nation's debate over health care reform, non-medical groups are also lobbying to promote pet causes. They are shelling out considerable cash in the hope of influencing the direction of reform this summer.

July 7, 2009 | How large of a role do campaign contributions play when it comes time to vote on controversial legislation? That's the question that MSNBC's David Shuster poised to Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) last night, citing CRP data.

July 7, 2009 | Former heart surgeon Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.) has raised more than $971,000 from health professionals since 2003 -- his No. 1 industry backer. He is also a member of the House Republican Health Care Reform Working Group and a vocal advocate for private market reforms.

July 7, 2009 | The Washington Post is launching a review of its operating practices to "ensure that its business practices do not compromise its journalistic ethics when the newspaper organizes conferences or private events funded by sponsors," the paper reports this morning.

July 6, 2009 | Washington's revolving door may fall off its hinges as lawmakers continue debating health care reform. Citing data from the Center for Responsive Politics, the Washington Post reported this morning that insurers, pharmaceutical companies, medical associations and hospitals have hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress as part of a $1.4 million-a-day lobbying campaign.

July 6, 2009 | The first sign of fissures in the business community over health care reform arrived last week when big-box retailer Wal-Mart announced its support for a proposed federal requirement that employers provide health coverage for their workers. This pits Wal-Mart against the preeminent lobbying powerhouse, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

July 2, 2009 | As chief executive of America's Health Insurance Plans, Karen Ignagni has emerged as a central figure in the debate over health care reform. And like many other registered lobbyists, Ignagni has extended her influence and connections by opening her wallet to political candidates.

July 2, 2009 | Recent polls have shown that a broad majority of Americans favor a "public option" for health insurance. Yet public opinion may not be as powerful a force as the lobbying efforts of industries seeking to protect the status quo. Consumer groups that favor President Obama's proposals to lower costs and expand coverage are being decidedly outspent and out-lobbied by drug manufacturers, insurers, HMOS and doctors' associations.

June 25, 2009 | In the first three months of 2009, the pharmaceutical and health products industry has spent more than $66.5 million on lobbying–an amount that translates into $1.2 million every day Congress has been in session. Just how much influence will that amount buy?

June 25, 2009 | Three finance professors recently published a report stating that for every dollar a company spends on lobbying, its value increases by $200. That equates to a 22,000 percent return on the investment in lobbying.

June 23, 2009 | As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Max Baucus is playing a key role in determining the shape, size, and cost of health care reform. The Montana Democrat's influence may be even keener as a result of the lobbyist web that flows from his office.

June 17, 2009 | For some individuals, how Congress aims to reform America's health care system is literally a matter of life and death. For some industries, it could mean the difference between weathering the economic storm or shuttering their businesses. Over the next month, Capital Eye will be following the money as the various special interest groups continue to play politics in response to Congress's health reform proposals. Follow the month-long series here.

June 2, 2009 | President Barack Obama's choice for the Secretary of the Army, Rep. John McHugh (R-N.Y.) would bring with him strong ties to the defense industry's checkbooks and lobbyists, including Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and PMA Group.

June 1, 2009 | CRP commends the administration's latest move to extend the ban on oral communications beyond registered lobbyists to include ANYONE who is connected to a competitive bid application for recovery funds.

May 28, 2009 | A few of CRP's watchdog cohorts, including the Center for Public Integrity and the Sunlight Foundation, have been busily putting our data to use this week, with some pretty interesting results.

May 14, 2009 | As Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) eye new rules and regulations to ameliorate the financial turmoil, credit rating agencies are coming under increased scrutiny and are reaching out to K Street for a helping hand.

May 11, 2009 | A number of former PMA Group lobbyists have started their own firm, Flagship Government Relations, which collected $210,000 from clients in the 1st Quarter of 2009. Here's a full list of where PMA's lobbyists have wound up so far.

May 7, 2009 | It's not every day that CRP gets an invitation to the White House, so yesterday's meeting on Pennsylvania Avenue was a great opportunity for the administration to hear our OpenSecrets. We share and continue that important conversation here.

April 30, 2009 | New restrictions on campaign cash associated with earmarks have been introduced in Congress. A CRP examination shows how tricky it will be determine which donations to accept and which to ban.

April 30, 2009 | Given all of the variables, measuring the impact of the economy on K Street isn't exactly a science. But the Center for Responsive Politics has conclusively found that lobbying during the first three months of 2009 has actually increased slightly compared to the same period of time last year. Here you can check out how much which industries and clients have spent the most on lobbying so far this year and which have increased or decreased the most since the start of 2008.

April 30, 2009 | Although the lobbying industry doesn't seem to have taken a hit in the first three months of 2009 compared to the same time last year, recipients of cash from the federal government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) handed out less money to lobbyists than they had in any quarter of 2008.

April 13, 2009 | Politicians, prepare yourselves. Lobbyists, look out. Today the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics is putting 200 million data records from the watchdog group's archive directly into the hands of citizens, activists, journalists and anyone else interested in following the money in U.S. politics.

April 9, 2009 | The Center for Responsive Politics has partnered with knowledge-sharing site Helium to find out how you feel about a variety of topics related to money-in-politics. Join the debate by writing a 500-750 word essay in response to one of many intriguing questions on CRP's official Helium site.

April 2, 2009 | OpenSecrets.org now tracks the number of filers that reported lobbying on a particular piece of legislation, back to 2005, providing information about the specific clients that paid for the work and the lawmakers sponsoring the bills. You can now search OpenSecrets.org's Lobbying Database by a bill's name, description or number. See some of our initial findings here.

March 19, 2009 | Happy Sunshine Week! In observance of the national government transparency initiative, CRP offers this money-in-politics disclosure report card, grading the federal government on its efforts to shed some light on the ties between its decisions and the private money affecting those decisions. Although the government has made strides in a few key areas since Sunshine Week 2008, it still has a whole lot of homework to do.

March 19, 2009 | The colleges and universities competing in this year's NCAA men's basketball tournament aren't just powerhouses on the court. Some of them are influential in Washington, too, paying lobbyists large sums in pursuit of research dollars and federal student aid. Check out CRP's bracket, based on how March Madness would turn out if these schools' 2008 lobbying spending determined the tournament's outcome.

February 26, 2009 | President Obama's Tuesday address to Congress was entirely about jump-starting the economy, but he didn't even hint at a looming legislative battle between business and labor that both sides say could affect how quickly the country recovers. The two longtime adversaries may have different political strategies, but both sides have already spent plenty of cash trying to persuade lawmakers to side with them.

February 25, 2009 | Since August 2008, when the economic crisis started making headlines and companies began asking lawmakers for some financial help in the form of billions of dollars, CRP has been taking a look at the political influence of companies and industries looking for a government lifeline. This archive contains what we've produced as we follow the money behind the Wall Street shakeout and the government's attempts to jump-start the economy.

February 24, 2009 | When President Obama addresses the nation tonight in a State of the Union fashion, it won't just be Congress and members of the public tuning in. Special interests, too, will be paying close attention to what the president has to say about upcoming plans that could affect them. Capital Eye takes a look at the key issues Obama is likely to discuss--and the industries, sectors and groups that will be listening closely to his message.

February 19, 2009 | Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) has been the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee since 1999 and returned to his post as chair in 2007. Not surprisingly given his committee assignment, Bingaman's campaigns run, in part, on fuel from the energy sector.

February 17, 2009 | Money manager Robert Allen Stanford now has two things in common with embattled investment manager Bernard Madoff: both have come under scrutiny for allegedly defrauding their investors, and both have given significant funds to politicians. Between its PAC and its employees, Stanford Financial Group has given $2.4 million to federal candidates, parties and committees since 2000.

February 12, 2009 | The close ties between Rep. John Murtha and a Washington lobbying firm raided by the FBI have put the powerful Pennsylvania Democrat under greater scrutiny. The lobbyists at PMA Group have been Murtha's fifth most generous campaign donor over time, but he is just one of 284 members of the 111th Congress who have collected money from the firm, which specializes in securing federal earmarks for its clients. In total, PMA Group's employees and its political action committee have given current members of Congress $3.4 million since 1989.

February 4, 2009 | The companies that have been awarded taxpayers' money from Congress's bailout bill spent $77 million on lobbying and $37 million on federal campaign contributions, CRP has found. The return on investment: 258,449 percent.

February 2, 2009 | Robert Kaiser, author of the new book "So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government" and an associate editor of the Washington Post, used data from CRP in a Post essay Friday, arguing that lobbyists and special interests giving campaign contributions have excessive power over Washington, exploiting "public service for private gain."

January 30, 2009 | The new president's executive order prohibiting incoming members of the administration from working on issues they've lobbied on in the two years prior leaves a loophole that undermines President Obama's efforts to slow down the revolving door for lobbyists, CRP board member Whitney North Seymour wrote to the New York Times this week. Seymour calls for transparency to make the ethics rules enforceable.

January 29, 2009 | While companies across the board were losing record amounts of money and laying off employees last year, at least one industry seemed to weather the recession: lobbying. Special interests paid Washington lobbyists $3.2 billion in 2008, more than any other year on record and a 13.7 percent increase from 2007, CRP has found. Corporations in the finance, insurance and real estate sector and automotive industry actually slowed or decreased their lobbying spending overall last year, relying instead on trade associations to represent them.

January 27, 2009 | Although Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) is chair of one of the more powerful congressional committees, he probably isn't the envy of his peers these days with an economic crisis growing larger by the day. Dodd has put in two years as chair of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs and is now charged with shaping legislation to jump-start the economy and help floundering companies, including those that have contributed to his campaigns.

January 23, 2009 | As chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., is a target for campaign contributions from Wall Street and the health sector. He's outlined his own vision for health care reform and his committee will have to decide if the overhaul is fiscally possible.

January 15, 2009 | There won't be any corporate advertising on the dais, but a number of major corporations and influential industries will be represented at Barack Obama's inauguration by individuals who've contributed as much as $50,000 apiece--and bundled up to $300,000--to underwrite the festivities. According to a new analysis of inaugural donors by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, individuals associated with Microsoft, Google, Citigroup and many more companies are among the upcoming event's biggest contributors.

January 15, 2009 | Within the next few months, it will become increasingly clear how the federal government intends to tackle pressing issues, including the economy, health care reform and curbing global warming. Those efforts, led by a Democratic president and an expanded Democratic majority in Congress, might look drastically different from those of the last eight years under Republican President Bush. What won't change, however, are the attempts by special interests to influence legislation. Capital Eye looks at which industries are spending money to shape the economic stimulus, health care reform, energy policy and labor laws.

December 15, 2008 | As Washington, D.C., prepares itself for what will likely be one of the largest inauguration audiences in history, some of the country's wealthiest individuals in Hollywood and New York are financing the event as it grows into a major production. So far the presidential inaugural committee has collected at least $9.7 million from at least 239 contributors.

December 11, 2008 | Although local and state governments usually send lobbyists to Capitol Hill on their behalf, mayors and governors from across the nation have been meeting with President-elect Barack Obama and Congress in the last week with their economic wish lists. Despite the money crunch, this year city, state and municipal governments are on track to spend more on federal lobbying than they have in the last two years.

December 1, 2008 | The fundraisers for the Obama-Biden transition announced this morning that they raised just under $1.2 million to finance the transition in the 11 days following Barack Obama's election. At a little over $100,000 per day, the pace of the transition's private fundraising is not nearly as torrid as during the campaign, when Obama's average daily haul was about $1 million.

November 25, 2008 | Under the leadership of New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee collected more than $12.8 million in this election cycle from the securities and investment industry, more than double what Wall Street provided before the New Yorker took over. But for the 2010 cycle, when he'll be up for re-election, Schumer is passing the DSCC baton across the river, to New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez.

November 25, 2008 | Members of Barack Obama's transition team weren't necessarily selected solely on their résumés and expertise--some may have scored positions over similarly qualified individuals because they supported the president-elect by bundling money for his presidential campaign or opening their own wallets to him. CRP has put together a full list of Obama's nearly 400 transition team members, along with tallies of their campaign contributions and links to their profiles in our Lobbying, Revolving Door and Bundler databases here.

November 21, 2008 | The surge of activity in the nation's capital to revive the country's economy apparently hasn't caused a torrent of lobbying funds by the insurance companies, investment banks, mortgage companies and savings and loans central to the government's actions. While unions, companies and organizations across all industries increased their lobbying expenditures 2 percent in the 3rd Quarter of this year compared to the first three months of 2008, the finance, insurance and real estate sector apparently scaled back, decreasing its spending by 9 percent.

November 12, 2008 | Like the Energizer Bunny, Barack Obama's $640-million fundraising machine is still going and going, now soliciting private donations to make the Democrat's transition to the White House as smooth as possible. By setting up a nonprofit corporation, the Obama-Biden Transition Project, Obama can tap his most generous donors to add to the $6.3 million he'll already receive in taxpayer money for the effort.

November 5, 2008 | A day after being elected president and acknowledging "the worst financial crisis in a century," Barack Obama asked one of the biggest recipients of Wall Street campaign contributions to be his chief of staff. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois congressman who was an aide in the Clinton White House, was the top House recipient in the 2008 election cycle of contributions from hedge funds, private equity firms and the larger securities/investment industry--not the most popular of industries in the current economy.

November 3, 2008 | Unlike members of Congress who have to wait at least a year (two for senators) after retiring from public service to become registered lobbyists, the influence peddlers themselves don't face a cooling-off period if they want to run for Congress. With the help of the Center for Responsive Politics, USA Today has identified 15 current and former lobbyists who hope to be elected to Congress tomorrow, and only six of them are incumbents.

October 16, 2008 | Verizon and AT&T don't seem to be having any trouble establishing a connection with John McCain. In addition to contributing at least $237,600 to McCain's presidential bid, the telephone utilities have boosted the Republican's cell phone reception on his 15-acre ranch in Arizona, free of charge, according to the Washington Post.

October 16, 2008 | An economic recession is looking increasingly likely, but the personal finances of members of Congress suggest they will be able to withstand the slowdown far better than most Americans, according to a new analysis of lawmakers' latest personal financial reports by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

October 16, 2008 | Lobbyists thrive on having access to politicians, and there are few better ways to gain that access than by making campaign contributions. Thanks to a 2007 change in Congress's ethics laws, federal lobbyists and their employers must now disclose their campaign contributions. We've analyzed them here on OpenSecrets.org.

October 9, 2008 | Not at all to the chagrin of oil and gas companies (and lawmakers who have received campaign donations from them), Wall Street is the new black for congressional candidates looking to link their opponents to an unpopular industry. As federal lawmakers have wrestled with an economic bailout plan worth $700 billion, candidates who have received contributions from the financial sector are on the defensive. Find out which candidates are filling their war chests with money from the finance sector in Capital Eye's final installment of Races to Watch.

October 6, 2008 | On its own, fundraising is a serious challenge; add the obstacle of navigating complicated campaign finance laws and it's enough to deter many from the political arena. However, individuals with deep pockets can finance their own campaigns, and unlike contributions raised from other people, there is no limit to how much personal money candidates can give themselves. Capital Eye takes a look at the top self-funders seeking congressional office this election cycle.

October 2, 2008 | Like reading tea leaves, one way to predict how a congressional race is going to go is by looking at the disparity in fundraising between the candidates. So far this election cycle, 280 House and Senate incumbents on November's ballot have collected at least 10 times more than the opponent they face in the general election. In this installment of Races to Watch, Capital Eye looks into why some of these incumbents have been such successful fundraisers.

October 1, 2008 | More than a quarter of the money raised by congressional candidates on the November ballot has come from business and labor PACs, not from individual donors, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Capital Eye has profiled some races where labor union and business PAC money is playing the largest role.

September 30, 2008 | Registered lobbyists aren't just getting the attention of lawmakers while on the job. Like any other member of the public, they, too, are able to contribute up to the maximum amount per election to candidates of their choice. The Center for Responsive Politics has identified the congressional races with candidates who are receiving the most money from registered lobbyists.

September 29, 2008 | Members of the House of Representatives who supported bailing out the financial sector with $700 billion in taxpayer money have received 51 percent more in campaign contributions from the finance, insurance and real estate sector in their congressional careers than those who opposed the emergency legislation, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics calculated following the 228-205 vote on Monday that defeated the House bill.

September 29, 2008 | The oil and gas industry, under the spotlight this fall with energy at the forefront of political discourse, isn't hesitating to put some of its record profits into the hands of candidates who support its cause (or those it's seeking to convert). So far this election cycle, the oil and gas industry has given $12.3 million total to congressional candidates. The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has identified the candidates who have received the most money from oil and gas interests in this election cycle, and Capital Eye selected a few races to more deeply examine the impact of well-digger dollars on politics.

September 29, 2008 | Barack Obama defended his decision not to accept public financing by arguing that running a campaign for the White House based on small contributions accomplishes what the public financing system aims to do but falls short of doing: curb the influence of outside interest groups. In many congressional races, the issue of who's backing the candidate--wealthy donors or everyone else--is finding its way into debates over the best way to fix the economy and whether campaign contributions and lobbying by the financial sector had anything to do with today's economic crisis. Capital Eye takes a closer look at some of these races.

September 25, 2008 | Private interests and members of the public aren't the only ones betting their money on the congressional candidates they hope will win (or retain) congressional seats. Lawmakers in both parties have a vested interest in seeing their own candidates succeed this November, with Democrats wanting to strengthen their majority and Republicans hoping to minimize their losses. Here we look at some of the candidates getting the largest cash infusions from their own parties, indicating a close race.

September 24, 2008 | With few exceptions, incumbents will out-raise their challengers--so far this election cycle, incumbents for Congress have raised nine times more than their challengers, on average, and there is not a single Senate race where the challenger has raised more money than the sitting senator. Although challengers aren't winning the money race on the Senate side, the Center for Responsive Politics has identified 14 House races where the challenger surpassed the incumbent in fundraising after the most recent reporting period, through June.

September 24, 2008 | It's the presidential eclipse: Every four years, media coverage about all angles of the race for the White House (significant or not) overshadows all but a handful of too-close-to-call congressional races. Yet, in the midst of an economic meltdown, record gas prices and a five-year war, there's no question that citizens care about who represents them in Congress, not just who moves into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. While other political analysts focus on the most competitive congressional races, Capital Eye will spend the next week profiling contests with an interesting fundraising angle--even those where the winner is pretty easy to predict.

September 23, 2008 | The last time Congress seriously debated how to regulate the financial industry, the result was legislation that allowed the nation's largest banks to get even larger and take risks that had been prohibited since the Great Depression. A look back at that debate, which was over the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, reveals that campaign contributions may have influenced the votes of politicians who, a decade later, are now grappling with the implosion of the giant banks they helped to foster.

September 9, 2008 | CRP watchdogs Sheila Krumholz and Massie Ritsch weren't barking up the wrong trees these last two weeks at the national party conventions, where they spent part of their time sniffing out the money behind the scenes at the convention and most of their time engaging members of the press to tell the world about that influence. The Politico featured Sheila, CRP's executive director, and Massie, our communications director, in an article Tuesday, describing their adventures in both Denver and St. Paul.

September 2, 2008 | Alaska's well-known "Bridge to Nowhere" is among the most criticized federal earmarked projects, cancelled last year by the state's governor and John McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin. Palin, however, has brought home her own share of pork, according to an examination by Taxpayers for Common Sense that was reported in the Washington Post.

August 27, 2008 | Congressional newbies who feared they came to Capitol Hill too late to enjoy the famed convention parties thrown by corporate interests (a practice banned by recent ethics laws) will have a chance this afternoon to do just that. Visa and US Bank (a subsidiary of US Bancorp)--which have spent a total of $2.6 million on lobbying in the first six months of the year--are hosting a reception in the late afternoon for the freshman members of the House of Representatives. These lawmakers have also collected $19,450 in campaign contributions from the two companies' employees and PACs since they were elected.

August 26, 2008 | For every star-studded concert and poker tournament when the sun goes down over the Rockies, there are dozens of mundane corporate events during the day that resemble what goes on in Washington nearly every other day of the year. Such was the scene Tuesday at a daytime event sponsored by the Financial Services Roundtable, an influential alliance of the nation's biggest banks, insurers, mortgage lenders, investment advisors, credit card companies.

August 25, 2008 | Barack Obama may be trying to keep lobbyists out of his campaign, but after selecting Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate in the upcoming presidential election, he won't be able to keep lobbyists out of the family. Biden's son, Hunter, has been a registered lobbyist since 2001, pushing the agenda of universities and biotech companies on Capitol Hill.

August 25, 2008 | You could hold a presidential nominating convention with just the delegates, but you couldn't finance a presidential campaign without the bundlers. So, these uber-fundraisers are also in attendance at the conventions in Denver and St. Paul, and they are enjoying special perks for delivering hundreds of thousands of dollars to their candidate's coffers. Bundlers are now listed for both Obama and McCain in OpenSecrets.org's presidential section.

August 24, 2008 | There is an emboldened breed of politician strutting around Denver this week and tonight, as part of the Democratic Party's convention, multiple corporations will be throwing a late-night bash in honor of these creatures. A group of fiscally conservative Democrats known as the Blue Dog Coalition has been able to leverage centrist appeal and an increasing Democratic majority into strong gains in the House of Representatives. The group's unique appeal is evidenced in the Blue Dogs' formidable fundraising coalition.

August 23, 2008 | Now that Barack Obama has announced his running mate, reporters will be scrambling to cover every aspect of Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.)--his politics, his personal life, what he adds to the Democrats' presidential ticket and what aspects could make him a liability for the party. At the Center for Responsive Politics, we've strung together our own observations about Biden's campaign fundraising and personal finances.

August 21, 2008 | There are more than 400 opportunities for attendees of the upcoming Democratic and Republican national conventions to party with their party. But if you're a member of Congress, partaking comes with pitfalls. For lawmakers, here's a guide of do's and don't's if you want to meticulously follow the new ethics rules. Just do these things and you've forever broken the ties that formerly bound you to special interests.

August 20, 2008 | In an updated study out today, Campaign Finance Institute has identified more than 170 of the corporations, unions and other organizations that will be picking up the tab for these multi-day campaign advertisements, and uses data from the Center for Responsive Politics to measure the political spending of these organizations apart from their convention sponsorships.

August 7, 2008 | The recently redesigned OpenSecrets.org reached a milestone this week: 1,000 people have signed up for personalized MyOpenSecrets profiles, which allow you to "watchdog what you want" and have the information waiting for you every time you visit the site. Here at the Center for Responsive Politics we're delighted that so many people are taking advantage of this new feature we launched in May.

July 30, 2008 | Soon there will be more light in Congress's lobby, as lobbyists file their first-ever reports detailing their campaign contributions to lawmakers. The reports are required by the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007.

July 21, 2008 | Having served 38 years in the House, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) has accomplished quite a bit. This election cycle is no exception, receiving more money than any other member of Congress from seven different industries. Lately, however, Rangel's methods of raising money have been questioned.

July 10, 2008 | Industries across the board have a stake in the outcome of energy legislation, either because they are looking for handouts or trying to minimize harm. Capital Eye profiles the major players, their concerns and the money they're spending to be heard on Capitol Hill.

July 10, 2008 | If there's one dreaded stop on every traveler's roadmap these days, it's the gas station. With the cost of fuel topping $4 a gallon this summer for the first time ever, there are a lot of questions, but not many clear-cut answers. Capital Eye's reporters dropped in on service stations in the D.C. area to find out where consumers are placing the blame.

July 10, 2008 | In analyzing the influence of private money on public policy, a great deal of attention is given to large special interest groups. Everyone has heard about Big Oil and Big Pharma. However, very few people know about the influence of fringe organizations such as "Big Golf" or the Australian meat lobby.

July 2, 2008 | When Anheuser-Busch rejected an unsolicited $46 billion buyout offer from InBev, a Belgian brewing company, reservations about the sale of an American icon to a foreign company quickly began brewing on Capitol Hill. While Anheuser-Busch put its lobbyists to work to keep its company locally owned, InBev's chief executive, Carlos Brito, also came to Washington to meet with lawmakers, hoping to soften some of their staunch opposition to the takeover.

June 26, 2008 | Just when the rest of us are taking off for summer vacations, the Federal Election Commission is getting back to work. The five new commissioners confirmed by the Senate this week now constitute a full quorum.

June 25, 2008 | Eight government watchdog organizations today urged Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain to reveal more details about fundraisers for their presidential campaigns who "bundle" contributions in amounts greatly exceeding what they're permitted to contribute on their own, and to furnish additional data about their small donors.

June 20, 2008 | Two of Washington's most influential lobbying firms have taken a hint (or maybe a hit) from the presumptive presidential nominees' anti-lobbyist mantra and won't be involved in this summer's presidential nominating conventions.

June 19, 2008 | Here's further evidence that the political significance of the Democratic National Committee's refusal of lobbyists' contributions is greater than the new policy's financial significance: In 2004, federally registered lobbyists—whether they work at lobbying firms or in-house for corporations, trade groups or unions—contributed only about $581,000 to the DNC, or not quite two-tenths of 1 percent of the committee's overall fundraising in '04.

June 19, 2008 | Barack Obama told supporters this morning that he'll be forgoing more than $80 million in public funds for the general election, making him the first major party nominee to reject the taxpayers' grant since the program began in 1976.

June 18, 2008 | The pace of congressional travel has slowed since new ethics rules went into effect last year, but CRP's update of its travel database shows that some lawmakers are still collecting frequent flier miles on someone else's dime.

June 9, 2008 | The money that flows into Congress is often meant to spur the stream of money back out of Congress. Such is the case especially with contributors seeking a handout from their representative in the form of earmarks, or pork.

June 6, 2008 | Capitol Hill has ceased its green battle-for now. The U.S. Senate voted against continuing the debate over new climate change legislation, but environmentalists will likely continue to lobby for greener living, while energy and business lobbyists will continue to focus on those green dollar bills.

June 5, 2008 | Now that the Democrats have a presidential nominee who refuses contributions from lobbyists and political action committees, the Democratic National Committee is bringing its own fundraising policies in line with Barack Obama's.

May 30, 2008 | The White House's new resident in January is going to have one heck of a complex economic mess to deal with. If that person is John McCain, he'll be there in part because of the hard work of a man whom economists are blaming for the crippling subprime meltdown.

May 28, 2008 | John McCain has come under a lot of fire recently for hiring lobbyists to run his presidential campaign and now, in an effort to preserve his image as a crusader against special interests, the presumptive Republican nominee is trying to rid his staff of them. The press, however, is asking whether his vetting process is actually going to do the job.

May 27, 2008 | Climatologists aren't the only source of data on global warming. It turns out that disclosure reports filed with Congress show that lobbying on climate change has been heating up sharply in recent years.

May 22, 2008 | A new poll from the Onion News Network has produced some shocking results: corporate lobbyists are dissatisfied with Congress after being neglected by lawmakers for years. They're fed up with dishing out millions and millions of dollars with no legislative return, they're fed up with politicians breaking their promises and, dangit, they're fed up with their corporate sponsorship being taken for granted.

May 19, 2008 | Tuesday, May 20 at midnight is the deadline for the presidential candidates to file their fundraising reports for April. At the Center for Responsive Politics we will grab the electronically filed data on Wednesday morning and go to work on categorizing donations by geography, industry, company, etc.

May 15, 2008 | First John McCain came under fire for hiring lobbyists to advise him during his presidential bid after cultivating a reputation for opposing the influence of special interests on government. Now he's being criticized for the specific work that those lobbyists do.

May 14, 2008 | Despite ethics rules that ban lawmakers from receiving gifts of any value from lobbyists, the NFL's Washington Redskins have found a way to allow members of Congress to sit comfortably--and cheaply--in a lobbyist's skybox.

May 12, 2008 | Former lawmakers turned lobbyists have plenty to offer their clients--not only do they have friends in Congress, they've got campaign money to give to those friends. CRP's executive director, Sheila Krumholz, was on CBS Evening News on May 9, discussing the revolving door between the public and private sector that allows former members of Congress to donate leftover campaign funds to former colleagues they're now lobbying.

May 9, 2008 | The Washington Post's story this morning about a land deal supported by John McCain that benefits his donors, bundlers and staffers illustrates how furiously Washington's revolving door spins. It's enough to make even a senator dizzy.

April 24, 2008 | The New York Times generated a lot of buzz this week with a story about military analysts who work for military contractors when they're not opining on television. The analysts, who have unprecedented access to information from the Bush administration, lobby for military contractors, serve on their boards and act as consultants to them.

April 24, 2008 | Monday, April 21 was the deadline for lobbyists to report their activity under a new quarterly filing system. We will incorporate the new data into our Lobbying Database as the Senate Office of Public Records makes it available electronically.

April 18, 2008 | When environmentalists, lobbyists and eco-friendly citizens come a-knockin' on lawmakers' office doors on Earth Day next week, Democrats (and some Republicans) will detail their legislation that directs taxes collected from the oil and gas industry towards renewable energy initiatives. What they probably won't mention is that lawmakers themselves aren't taking a risk on them with their own money.

April 18, 2008 | It was just last week that we were finally able to close the books on lobbying in 2007 -- a record $2.8 billion total spending -- and now it's time for lobbyists to file their first reports of 2008. Under a new quarterly filing system, disclosures covering January through March are due on Monday, April 21.

April 10, 2008 | Corporations, industries, labor unions, governments and other interests spent a record $2.79 billion in 2007 to lobby for favorable policies in Washington, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has calculated.

March 27, 2008 | Sixteen of America's top collegiate basketball teams remain in the NCAA tournament. Many of the colleges and universities that these players represent are also players in Washington, represented by lobbyists who are seeking research grants, earmarks and other funding for the institutions that hire them. In the spirit of March Madness, the Center for Responsive Politics considered how each team would do if it were the school's lobbying team, not their basketball team, that was competing.

March 20, 2008 | Since Sunshine Week 2007, a few rays of sunlight have lit up Congress and the Bush administration in the form of ethics legislation and other bills mandating fuller disclosure. As these changes are implemented, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics is examining their effects on the public's ability to know what's going on in campaign finance, lobbying and other areas related to money and politics.

March 18, 2008 | Thursday, March 20 at midnight is the deadline for the presidential candidates to file their fundraising reports for February. (Now that we're in the election year, presidential candidates file on the 20th of each month, instead of quarterly.) At the Center for Responsive Politics we will grab the electronically filed data on Friday morning and go to work on categorizing donations by geography, industry, company, etc.

March 12, 2008 | Republican John McCain has been outspoken about the influence of special interests in Washington, but those working for his presidential campaign are lobbyists themselves. Most recently he's come under fire for his reliance on his top advisers who lobbied for a $35 billion contract for Airbus, which means the work will be outsourced.

February 21, 2008 | Last week, lobbyists and the corporations, industries, unions and other interests they work for filed their year-end disclosures. We have downloaded the data, and our researchers are categorizing these spenders by industry and interest.

February 21, 2008 | For congressmen who have been in office for decades, fundraising is easy and campaigning is cheap. And when they decide to leave office, donors' contributions can finance an extended retirement party.

February 14, 2008 | Today is the deadline for lobbyists and the corporations, industries, unions and other interests they work for to file their year-end disclosures. These reports will cover the second half of 2007, from July through December.

February 3, 2008 | Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain maintained their status as lobbyists' favorite candidates all through 2007. By the end of the year, Clinton had collected $823,000 from lobbyists—more than anyone else—while McCain's haul totaled $416,000.

February 2, 2008 | Democrat Barack Obama vowed not to accept contributions from political action committees, and it seems they've gotten his message loud and clear. During the last three months of 2007, contributions from only three PACs slipped through the cracks—two of which appear to be committees controlled by local parties or candidates—for a total of $1,065 to Obama's campaign.

February 1, 2008 | Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John McCain have the most fundraisers that lobby for foreign countries, according to ABC News, giving those countries more access to Washington. "You always want someone who is well-connected, someone who is going to be greeted with open arms," Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, told ABC News.

January 31, 2008 | To demonstrate that they are Washington outsiders, some of the presidential candidates have assailed lobbyists for their influence in Washington. This week the lobbyists asked the candidates to lay off.

January 18, 2008 | A group backed by the coal industry is spending $35 million on a campaign to convince the presidential candidates and primary voters to support coal-fired electricity. Americans for Balanced Energy Choices already spent $1.3 million on a variety of ads in Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina. “The group’s message — that coal-fired power plants can…

January 17, 2008 | The game of politics can stall important bills, kill controversial amendments and bring the legislative system to a halt. But what happens at the start of an election year when a partisan squabble essentially shuts down the federal agency charged with overseeing—and enforcing—campaign finance laws?

January 17, 2008 | The main lobbying group for the hedge fund industry, the Managed Funds Association, has tapped Rep. Richard Baker (R-La.) to be its new leader — with his compensation valued at more than $1 million per year. (That’s far higher than Congress’s salary of $169,300, even after a recent pay raise.) Baker, who was elected to…

January 17, 2008 | Hearing the presidential candidates debate who is more beholden to certain industries, you’d think they’d been researching their opponents’ fundraising on OpenSecrets.org. There, you too can learn which candidate has the most financial backing from insurance companies, lobbyists, drugmakers and many other industries whose influence the candidates have been debating. If you’re voting in a…

January 7, 2008 | As the New Hampshire primaries approach, the Democratic candidates for president are trying to show how their opponents are linked to lobbyists even as they decry such influences. <a href=”http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/summary.asp?id=N00000019&cycle=2008″>Hillary Clinton</a> has criticized <a href=”http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/summary.asp?id=N00009638&cycle=2008″>Barack Obama</a> for having a registered lobbyist as his New Hampshire co-chair. Clinton, however, called on the help of a chief…

January 3, 2008 | Before voters in Iowa and New Hampshire select their favorite presidential candidates, the Center for Responsive Politics urges them to use OpenSecrets.org to "follow the money" financing the campaigns.

December 6, 2007 | Lobbyists do represent ordinary Americans, as Hillary Clinton claims, but those contributing to her campaign mostly represent big industries, the Center for Responsive Politics finds. Obama and Edwards eschew lobbyists' money, but their biggest contributors still lobby in Washington.

October 17, 2007 | As in elections past, the presidential candidates won’t be running their campaign on political action committee money this cycle. Less than 1 percent of all contributions to the presidential candidates has come this year from PACs, which are more likely to put their money into congressional races and hope for a payoff. The bulk of…

April 18, 2007 | Candidates face a conundrum when it comes to lobbyists and their money. On the one hand, politicians may not want to be associated with the industry that spawned Jack Abramoff and other K Street scandals. On the other hand, lobbyists are professional networkers with access to wealthy people. John Edwards and Barack Obama have made…

April 7, 2007 | New leadership in the 110th Congress means newfound influence for interests friendly to Democrats By Miranda Blue and Lindsay Renick Mayer January 04, 2007 | With the changing of the guard on Capitol Hill comes a shift in lobbying efforts. In December, the Republican-led 109th Congress closed with a late-night flurry of bills to appease…

April 5, 2007 | Ethics concerns and new legislation have put the brakes on congressional travel in 2007. By Lindsay Renick Mayer April 05, 2007 | (This story has been corrected to reflect Rep. Steven Leslie Kagen’s trip to Miami this year.) As two ethics bills restricting congressional travel fly through the House and Senate, lawmakers are largely grounding…

March 29, 2007 | Most of the biggest spenders on lobbying increased their advocacy last year, while growth by the typical interest was flat. By Lindsay Renick Mayer March 29, 2007 | Critics may have dismissed the 109th Congress as “do-little,” but groups spending the most to lobby members of that Congress were seemingly doing a lot in 2006.…

March 15, 2007 | U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent 83% more on lobbying in 2006, but overall growth was less than 2 percent. Drug and biotech again topped all industries. ____________________ WASHINGTON – Washington’s influence industry managed to build its lobbying business in 2006, according to an analysis of year-end disclosures by the Center for Responsive Politics, but growth…

March 15, 2007 | Who's funding your elected representatives' campaigns, and how is that money being spent? What public policies are lobbyists trying to influence? It's your right to know, so speak up—here's how.

March 8, 2007 | Now that Democrats control Congress, the political dynamic of climate change has shifted. Many industries and interests have a stake. By Lindsay Renick Mayer March 08, 2007 | The earth is warming at an unnatural pace, but this isn’t the only climate change that has multiple industries re-assessing their political strategy. As the debate over…

February 8, 2007 | A generous giver to Republicans, the defense sector is facing new scrutiny now that Democrats are in control. By Lindsay Renick Mayer February 08, 2007 | In questioning just how many taxpayer dollars have been wasted on bloated contracts to fight the war in Iraq, members of a congressional oversight committee refuted the notion Wednesday…

January 22, 2007 | Global warming, the Iraq war and balancing the budget are likely to be among the issues the president addresses. By Lindsay Renick Mayer January 22, 2007 | When President Bush takes the podium on Tuesday night to deliver his annual address, he will do so before a nation that is far less supportive of his…

January 4, 2007 | With the capital’s post-election ‘NBA draft’ in full swing, a new online database tracks the public and private employment of 6,400 well-connected individuals ____________________ WASHINGTON – As Congress debates ways to slow the “revolving door” between Capitol Hill and K Street lobbying firms, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has added a new feature to…

January 3, 2007 | WASHINGTON – The longtime research director of the Center for Responsive Politics, Sheila Krumholz, has been promoted to Executive Director of the nonpartisan watchdog group, the Center’s board of directors has announced. And to develop new services to further the Center’s educational mission, diversify financial support for the organization and form new strategic partnerships, the…

December 14, 2006 | Ethics proposals that would ban lobbyists from paying for lawmakers’ meals have Washington restaurants worried. By Miranda Blue December 14, 2006 | At Charlie Palmer’s Steakhouse, a white-tableclothed Washington institution in the shadow of the Capitol, you can lunch on the Kansas City rib-eye chop with onion confit for $38. Two blocks away, at the…

November 16, 2006 | Campaign finance profiles of Senate Majority Leader Reid, incoming House Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Hoyer and runner-up Murtha By Lindsay Renick Mayer November 16, 2006 | (Updated to reflect Hoyer’s win for majority leader) The message from voters in the 2006 midterm elections seems clear: Out with the old, in with the new. As the…

October 25, 2006 | This year's intensely competitive election for control of the House of Representatives and Senate will be the most expensive midterm election ever, the Center for Responsive Politics predicts. Candidates, national political parties and outside issue advocacy groups will spend roughly $2.6 billion by the end of 2006 to influence the 472 federal contests around the United States and pad the war chests of incumbents not running this year.

October 18, 2006 | Pennsylvania congressman urges reliance on ‘verifiable’ facts, but there has been little public disclosure of his daughter’s lobbying business. By Lindsay Renick Mayer October 18, 2006 | As federal investigators examine whether Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania used his political clout to help his daughter’s lobbying firm and her clients, members of the press and…

June 22, 2006 | Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White haven’t just hired appropriations staffers to gain influence. The lobbyists and their clients have bankrolled committee members’ campaigns and PACs. By Massie Ritsch June 22, 2006 | Clients of a Washington, D.C. lobbying firm under federal investigation have contributed at least $6.2 million to the campaigns and political action…

June 5, 2006 | A closely watched and expensive special election in California’s 50th District will determine who takes the seat of the convicted congressman—at least until November. UPDATED June 6 to include the national parties’ additional spending on this race By Massie Ritsch June 02, 2006 | As their longtime congressman sits in federal prison for taking bribes,…

May 30, 2006 | Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson has contributed generously to Republicans—more than outgoing secretary John Snow. Paulson’s wife and employees favor Democrats, however. By Massie Ritsch and Neil Tambe May 30, 2006 | In nominating Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson to be the next Secretary of the Treasury, President Bush tapped a major Republican donor who…

April 27, 2006 | The masses huddled on immigration issue include some surprising interests By Courtney Mabeus April 27, 2006 | Just as the United States is a tapestry woven of people from different countries and backgrounds, the various groups that lobby on the immigration issue form a diverse and often surprising patchwork. Lobbyists for ballet dancers, mushroom growers,…

April 13, 2006 | Recent scrutiny of companies that prepare individuals’ tax returns can’t compare to oversight of corporate accountants. The tax-prep industry’s political influence can’t compare either. By Courtney Mabeus April 13, 2006 | It is said that there are two certainties in life: death and taxes. Days before millions of Americans scurry through W2’s, 1099’s and receipts…

April 7, 2006 | What do magazine publishers, a railroad and Microsoft have in common with Indian tribes? They were all clients of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the central figure in the corruption scandal unfolding in Washington. And during the time Abramoff represented them, they all made campaign contributions to members of Congress and President Bush.

March 30, 2006 | New analysis tallies contributions and lobbying by the disgraced lobbyist’s full client list. How much of the money, as Sen. Frist said, is ‘tainted’? ____________________ When Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty in January to corruption charges, politicians rushed to dump contributions they had received from the high-flying lobbyist and the Indian tribes he admitted defrauding. The…

March 28, 2006 | Free, easy-to-search Web site reveals even more of Washington’s “Open Secrets” ____________________ With lobbying under scrutiny in Washington like never before, the Center for Responsive Politics has launched a free online database that tracks the billions of dollars that corporations, labor unions and other organizations spend each year to influence Congress and federal agencies. Made…

March 23, 2006 | GOP activists favor these candidates for the White House in 2008. But who will the money follow? By Courtney Mabeus March 23, 2006 | Republican Party leaders and activists gathered in Tennessee this month, and in a straw poll anointed native son Bill Frist as their chosen one to run for president in 2008. The…

January 12, 2006 | UPDATE, Feb. 2: In an upset for acting Majority Leader Roy Blunt, House Republicans elected Ohio Rep. John Boehner 122-109 in a second-ballot vote to replace former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas). Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) dropped out after receiving 40 votes in the first ballot. By Center for Responsive Politics January 12, 2006 |…

Except for the Revolving Door section, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License by OpenSecrets.org. To request permission for commercial use, please contact us.